PV7    ,         T  I 

:    ,  : 


.       ....... 


TO  KIEL  IN  THE  "HERCULES 


'THE  THREE  ADMIRALS:"     REAR  ADMIRAL  ROBINSON,  U.  S.  : 
(LEFT),  VICE  ADMIRAL  BROWNING,  R.  N.   (CENTER),  REAR 
ADMIRAL  GROSSET  (FRENCH)   (RIGHT) 


TO  KIEL  IN  THE 
"HERCULES" 


BY 
LIEUT.   LEWIS  R.   FREEMAN,  R.  N.  V.  R. 

Official  Correspondent  with  the  Grand  Fleet,  and  Member 
of  Staff  of  Allied  Naval  Armistice  Commission 


WITH   ILLUSTRATIONS    FROM 
PHOTOGRAPHS  BY  THE  AUTHOR 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 
1919 


COPYEIGHT,    1919 

BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


VAIL-BALLOU     COMPANY 

•  IM8MAMTON  AND   NEW  YORK 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I  INTO  GERMAN  WATERS     ........  1 

II  GETTING  DOWN  TO  WORK     .......  31 

III  FIRST  IMPRESSIONS  OP  "STARVING  GERMANY"  .     .  61 

IV  ACROSS  THE  SANDS  TO  NORDERNEY  .....  92 

V  NORDHOLZ,  THE  DEN  OF  THE  ZEPPELINS   ....  122 

VI  MERCHANT  SHIPPING   .........  154 

VII  THE  BOMBING  OF  TONDERN     .......  179 


VIII    THROUGH  THE  CANAL  TO  THE  BALTIC 


198 


IX    To  WARNEMUNDE  AND  KUGEN 224 

X    JUTLAND  AS  A  GERMAN  SAW  IT 255 


XI    BACK  TO  BASE 


283 


^ 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"The  Three  Admirals."  Rear  Admiral  Robinson,  U.  S.  N. 
(left),  Vice  Admiral  Browning,  R.  N.  (center),  Rear 
Admiral  Grosset,  (French)  (right)  ....  Frontispiece 

Heligoland  in  sight! 18 

Members  of  the  Allied  Naval  Commission,  Admiral  Brown- 
ing in  center 34 

The  Allied  Naval  Commission  and  Staff,  taken  on  board 

Hercules 34 

The  Padre  of  the  Hercules  talking  with  newly  arrived 

British  prisoners 40 

In  the  Elbe,  Hamburg 166 

Railroad  station  at  Hamburg 166 

Floating  dock  for  lifting  submarines  in  Kiel  Harbour     .  182 

Birdseye  view  of  Kiel 192 

In  Kiel  dockyard 192 

H.  M.  S.  Viceroy  entering  Kiel  Canal  lock  at  Brunsbuttel  200 
Semaphore  station  on  Kiel  Canal,  from  Hercules  .      .      .  206 

Kiel  dockyard  from  the  Harbour 214 

Foreshore   of  Kiel   Harbour  with  the  Kaiserlich  Yacht 

Club  at  left  of  grove  of  trees 220 

Hindy    (left)    and   German   pilot  who   claimed   to   have 

launched  the  torpedo  which  damaged  the  Sussex  .  .  228 
British  prisoners  and  German  sailors  at  Warnemiinde  .  240 
View  of  Kiel  Canal  from  nearmost  turret  of  the  Hercules  258 
Hercules,  with  three  V  class  destroyers  in  Kiel  Harbour  .  266 
H.  M.  S.  Hercules  and  H.  M.  S.  Constance  in  Kiel  locks  .  286 


TO  KIEL  IN  THE  "HERCULES 


TO  KIEL  IN  THE  "HERCULES 


INTO    GERMAN    WATERS 

THE  Regensburg  has  been  calling  us  for  some 
time,"  said  the  chief  signal  officer  as  he  came 
down  for  his  belated  " watch"  luncheon  in  the 
ward-room,  "and  it  looks  as  though  we  might 
expect  to  see  her  come  nosing  up  out  of  the  mist 
any  time  after  two  o'clock.  She  excuses  herself 
for  being  late  at  the  rendezvous  by  saying  that 
the  fog  has  been  so  thick  in  the  Bight  that  she  had 
to  anchor  during  the  night.  It's  not  any  too  good 
a  prospect  for  a  look-see  at  Heligoland,  for  our 
course  hardly  takes  us  within  three  miles  of  it  at 
the  nearest." 

It  was  in  a  fog  that  the  Hercules  had  dropped 
down  through  the  moored  lines  of  the  Grand  Fleet 
the  previous  morning,  it  was  in  a  fog  that  she  had 
felt  her  way  out  of  the  Firth  of  Forth  and  by 
devious  mine-swept  channels  to  the  North  Sea, 
and  it  was  still  in  a  fog  that  she — the  first  surface 
warship  of  the  Allies  to  penetrate  deeply  into  them 
since  the  Battle  of  the  Bight,  not  long  after  the 

outbreak  of  the  war — was  approaching  German 

i 


in  the  "Hercules" 


waters.  Indeed,  the  whole  last  act  of  the  great 
naval  drama  —  from  the  coming  of  the  Konigsberg 
to  the  Forth,  with  a  delegation  to  receive  the  terms 
of  surrender,  to  the  incomparable  pageant  of  the 
surrender  itself  —  had  been  played  out  behind  the 
fitful  and  uncertain  raisings  and  lowerings  of  a  fog- 
curtain  ;  and  now  the  epilogue  —  wherein  there  was 
promise  that  much,  if  not  all,  that  had  remained 
a  mystery  throughout  the  unfolding  of  the  war 
drama  itself  should  be  finally  revealed  —  was  be- 
ing held  up  through  the  wilfulness  of  this  same 
perverse  scene-shifter.  The  light  cruiser,  Regens- 
burg,  which,  "  according  to  plan,"  was  to  have 
met  us  at  nine  that  morning  at  a  rendezvous  sug- 
gested by  the  German  Naval  Staff,  and  pilot  the 
Hercules  through  the  mine-fields,  had  not  been 
sighted  by  early  afternoon.  Numerous  floating 
mines,  rolling  lazily  in  the  bow-wave  spreading  to 
port  and  starboard  and  ogling  us  with  leering, 
moon-faced  impudence  in  the  fog,  had  been  sighted 
since  daybreak,  auguring  darkly  of  the  explosive 
barrier  through  which  we  were  passing  by  the 
"safe  course"  the  Germans  (in  lieu  of  the  prom- 
ised charts  which  had  failed  to  arrive)  had  ad- 
vised us  by  wireless  to  follow. 

Now  mines,  floating  or  submerged,  are  not 
pleasant  things  to  navigate  among.  Although, 
theoretically,  it  is  impossible  for  any  ship  to  run 


Into  German  Waters 


3 


ito  a  floating  mine  even  if  she  tries  (the  bow- 
wave  tending  to  throw  it  off,  as  many  experiments 
have  proved) ;  and  although,  theoretically,  a  ship 
fitted  with  paravanes  cannot  bring  her  hull  into 
contact  with  a  moored  mine ;  yet  the  fact  remained 
that  ships  were  being  lost  right  along  from  both 
kinds.  It  seemed  high  time,  then,  in  the  case 
of  the  Hercules  and  her  escorting  destroyers,  that 
the  German  Navy,  which  had  undertaken  to  see 
them  safely  through  the  mine  barrier,  and  which 
knew  more  about  the  pattern  of  its  death-traps 
than  any  one  else,  should  begin  to  shoulder  some 
of  its  responsibilities.  It  was  good  news  that  the 
Regensburg  was  about  to  make  a  tardy  appearance 
and  hand  over  a  hostage  in  the  form  of  a  German 
pilot. 

The  blank  grey  fog-curtain  which  trailed  its 
misty  folds  across  the  ward-room  scuttles  dis- 
couraged all  of  the  grate-side  loungers  whom  I 
tried  to  bestir  to  go  up  at  two  o'clock  to  watch 
for  the  appearance  of  the  Regensburg,  and,  meet- 
ing, with  no  better  success  in  the  snugly  com- 
fortable "  commission-room "  into  which  the 
former  gun-room  had  been  converted  for  the  voy- 
age, I  mounted  alone  the  iron  ladders  which  led  to 
the  lofty  vantage  of  the  signal  bridge.  There  was 
only  a  few  hundred  yards  of  visibility,  but  the 


4  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

even  throb  of  the  engines,  the  swift  run  of  the 
foam  along  the  sides,  and  the  sharp  sting  of  the 
air  on  my  cheek  told  that  there  had  been  little  if 
any  abatement  of  the  steady  speed  of  seventeen 
knots  at  which  Hercules  had  been  steaming  since 
she  passed  May  Island  the  previous  day  at  noon. 
The  Regensburg,  the  chief  yeoman  of  signals  told 
me,  had  made  a  W.T.  to  say  that  she  had  been  com- 
pelled by  the  fog  to  slow  down  again,  and  this, 
he  figured,  might  make  it  between  three  and  four 
o'clock  before  we  picked  her  up.  "There's  no 
use  waiting  for  the  Huns,  sir,"  he  said,  with  a 
tired  smile.  '  '  The  hanging  back  habit,  which  they 
were  four  years  in  cultivating,  seems  to  have 
grown  on  them  so  that  they're  hanging  back  even 
yet.  Best  go  down  and  wait  where  it's  warm,  and 
I'll  send  a  boy  to  call  you  when  we  know  for 
certain  when  she'll  turn  up." 

My  foot  was  on  the  ladder,  when  the  sight  of  a 
seagull  dancing  a  giddy  pas  seul  on  the  titillating 
horn  of  a  mine  bobbing  off  astern  recalled  a  story 
an  Italian  destroyer  skipper  had  once  told  me,  of 
how  he  had  seen  an  Albanian  sea  eagle  blow  itself 
up  as  a  consequence  of  executing  a  precisely  simi- 
lar manoeuvre.  I  lingered  to  get  the  chief  yeo- 
man 's  opinion  of  what  I  had  hitherto  considered  a 
highly  apocryphal  yarn,  and  when  he  was  called 
away  to  take  down  a  signal  to  pass  back  to  the 


Into  German  Waters  5 

destroyers,  the  loom  of  what  looked  to  me  like 
a  ship  taking  shape  in  the  fog  drew  me  over  to  the 
starboard  rail.  It  dissolved  and  disappeared  as 
my  glass  focussed  on  it,  only  to  raise  its 
amorphous  blur  again  a.  point  or  so  further  abeam. 
Then  I  recognized  it,  and  smiled  indulgent  wel- 
come to  an  old  friend  of  many  watches — the  first 
cousin  to  the  mirage,  the  looming  shape  which  a 
man  peering  hard  into  thick  fog  keeps  thinking 
he  sees  at  one  end  or  the  other  of  the  arc  of  his 
angle  of  vision. 

Any  man  actually  on  watch  knows  better  than 
to  let  his  mind  take  liberties  with  "fog  pictures," 
and  not  a  few  of  those  who  have  done  so  have 
had  the  last  picture  of  the  series  merge  into  a 
reality  of  wind  and  water  and  a  good  ship  banging 
itself  to  pieces  on  a  line  of  submerged  rocks.  But 
I — as  so  often  in  voyages  of  late — was  on  the 
bridge  without  duties  or  responsibilities.  I  was 
free  to  let  the  pictures  take  what  form  they  would ; 
and  it  must  have  been  what  the  chief  yeoman 
had  just  said  about  the  weariness  of  waiting  for 
the  Huns  that  turned  my  mind  to  what  I  had 
heard  and  seen  of  the  four-year  vigil  of  the  Grand 
Fleet. 

There  was  a  picture  of  Scapa  as  I  had  seen  it 
on  my  earliest  visit  from  the  basket  of  a  kite 
balloon  towed  from  the  old  Campania,  the  same 


6  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

Campania  which  now  rested  on  the  bottom  of  the 
Firth  of  Forth,  and  the  top-masts  of  which  we  had 
passed  a  half  cable's  length  to  port  as  the  Her- 
cules steamed  out  the  day  before.  There  were 
golden  sun-notes  weaving  in  a  Maypole  dance  with 
rollicking  slate-black  cloud  shadows  in  that  pic- 
ture; but  in  the  next — where  the  surface  of  the 
Flow  was  beaten  to  the  whiteness  of  the  snow- 
clad  hills  hemming  it  in — the  brooding  light  was 
darkly  sinister  and  ominous  of  import,  for  that 
was  the  winter  day  when  we  had  word  that  two 
destroyers,  which  the  might  of  the  Grand  Fleet 
was  powerless  to  save,  were  being  banged  to  bits 
against  a  cliff  a  few  miles  outside  the  gates.  Then 
there  was  a  picture  of  an  Orkney  midsummer  mid- 
night— just  such  a  night,  the  officer  of  the  watch 
told  me,  as  the  one  on  which  he  had  seen  the 
Hampshire,  with  Kitchener  pacing  the  quarter- 
deck alone,  pass  out  to  her  doom  two  years  previ- 
ously— with  a  fitful  green  light  flooding  the  Flow, 
reflected  from  the  sun  circling  just  below  the 
northern  horizon,  and  every  kite  balloon  in  the 
air  at  the  time  being  torn  from  its  cable  and  sent 
flying  towards  Scandinavia  before  the  ninety- 
mile  gale  which  had  sprung  up  from  nowhere 
without  warning. 

Visions  of  golf  on  Flotta,  picnics  under  the 
cliffs  of  Hoy,  and  climbs  up  the  peat-boggy  sides 


Into  German  Waters  7 

of  the  Ward  Hill  of  the  "Mainland,"  gave  place 
to  those  of  squadron  boxing  competitions — savage 
but  cleanly  fought  bouts  in  a  squared  circle  un- 
der the  elevated  guns  of  ' '  Q ' '  turret,  with  the  fun- 
nels, superstructures,  and  improvised  grandstands 
alive  with  bluejackets — and  regattas,  pulled  off  in 
various  and  sundry  craft  between  the  long  lines 
of  anchored  battle-ships.  A  long  series  (these 
more  like  panoramas)  of  hurried  unmoorings  and 
departures — by  division,  by  squadron,  and  with 
all  the  Grand  Fleet,  through  every  square  mile  of 
the  North  Sea  from  the  Bight  to  far  up  the  coast 
of  Norway — finished  up  at  Bosyth,  in  that  strange 
fortnight  just  before  the  end,  when  all  but  those 
on  the  "  inside "  thought  the  persistent  "  short 
notice  "  was  due  to  a  desire  to  keep  the  men  aboard 
on  account  of  the  'flu,  and  not  to  the  fact  of  which 
the  Admiralty  appear  to  have  been  so  well  advised, 
that  the  German  naval  authorities — for  the  first 
and  last  time — were  making  desperate  efforts  to 
get  their  ships  out  for  the  long-deferred  Tag. 
Then  the  fog-bank  ahead — or  so  ft  seemed — 
was  splashed  with  the  gay  colour  of  "  Armistice 
Night,"  when  all  the  spare  signal  lights  (to  say 
nothing  of  a  lot  that  couldn't  be  spared)  of  the 
Grand  Fleet  streaked  the  sky  with  joyous  spurts 
and  fountains  of  fire,  when  stealthy  pirate  bands 
from  the  K-boats  dropped  through  the  ward-room 


8  To  Kiel  in  the  "Hercules" 

skylights  of  the  light  cruisers  and  carried  off  pris- 
oners who  had  to  be  ransomed  with  champagne, 
when  Admirals  danced  with  matelots  on  the  fore- 
castles of  the  battle-cruisers,  and  all  the  pent-up 
feelings  of  four  years  ascended  in  one  great  ex- 
pansive "whouf"  of  gladness.  I  recalled  with  a 
chuckle  how  the  "General"  signal  which  the  Com- 
mander-m-Chief  had  made  ordering  the  historic 
occasion  to  be  celebrated  by  "splicing  the  main 
brace"  according  to  immemorial  custom  in  the 
Navy,  was  preceded  by  "Negative  6th  B.S.,"  in 
consideration  of  the  sad  fact  that  the  Yankee 
ships  had  nothing  aboard  to  ' '  splice ' '  with.  That 
didn't  prevent  them,  though,  from  bending  a  white 
ensign  on  their  flag  halliards,  hoisting  it  to  the 
main  topmast  of  the  New  York,  and  illuminating 
it  with  all  the  search-lights  of  the  squadron.  That 
happy  tribute,  I  recalled,  to  the  flag  of  the  Navy 
with  which  the  Americans  had  served  with  such 
distinction  for  a  year,  had  started  the  sacking  of 
the  signal  light  lockers,  and  that  picture  ended  as 
it  began,  with  the  dour  Scotch  heavens  lanced  with 
coloured  flame  spurts  which  the  dark  tide  of  the 
Firth  gave  back  in  crinkly  reflections. 

The  next  picture  to  sharpen  into  focus  on  the 
fog-curtain  was  that  of  a  long,  trim  three-funnelled 
cruiser,  with  a  white  flag  at  her  fore  and  the 
German  naval  ensign  at  her  main,  heading  in  to- 


Into  German  Waters  9 

ward  the  mouth  of  the  Firth  of  Forth  under  the 
escort  of  a  squadron  of  British  light  cruisers  and 
destroyers.  I  had  witnessed  the  meeting  of  the 
Konigsberg,  which  was  bringing  over  Admiral 
Meurer  and  other  German  naval  officers  to  ar- 
range the  details  of  the  surrender  of  the  High 
Sea  Fleet,  from  the  foretop  of  the  Cassandra. 
The  rendezvous,  at  which  the  Konigsberg  had  been 
directed  by  wireless  to  meet  the  Sixth  Light 
Cruiser  Squadron  ordered  to  escort  her  in, 
chanced  to  fall  in  an  area  under  which  a  German 
submarine,  a  fortnight  previously,  had  planted 
its  full  load  of  mines.  These,  in  the  regular 
course  of  patrol,  had  been  discovered  and  swept 
up  within  a  day  or  two,  but  since  that  fact  had 
not  been  communicated  to  the  Germans,  the 
Konigsberg,  doubtless  thinking  the  English  sense 
of  humour  had  prompted  them  to  prepare  for  her 
a  bit  of  a  surprise  in  the  way  of  a  lift  by  a 
German  petard,  skulked  off  to  the  southward, 
where  she  was  only  rounded  up  after  two  hours  of 
rending  the  ether  with  wireless  calls.  There  were 
two  things  I  remembered  especially  in  connection 
with  that  historic  meeting — one  was  the  mob  of 
civilians  (probably  would-be  delegates  from  the 
Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Council)  jostling  the 
officers  on  the  roomy  bridge  of  the  Konigsberg, 
and  the  other  Vas  the  fluent  cursing  of  the  gun- 


10  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

nery  lieutenant  of  the  Cassandra,  who  was  with 
me  in  the  f oretop,  over  the  unkind  fate  which  had 
robbed  him  of  the  chance  of  opening  up  with  his 
six-inch  guns  on  the  first  Hun  warship  he  had 
set  eyes  on  since  the  war  began.  I  thought  I  had 
heard  in  the  course  of  the  past  year  all  that  the 
British  sailor  had  to  say  of  the  German  as  a  naval 
foe ;  but  L said  several  new  things  that  after- 
noon, and  said  them  well. 

Poor  old  Cassandra!  Although  we  did  not  get 
word  of  it  until  a  day  or  two  after  our  arrival  in 
Wilhelmshaven,  within  a  very  few  hours  of  the 
time  I  was  thinking  of  her  there  in  the  fog  of  the 
Bight,  she  had  collided  with  a  mine  in  the  Baltic 
and  gone  to  the  bottom. 

There  was  another  picture  of  the  Konigsberg 
ready  to  follow  on  as  the  first  dissolved.  This 
was  the  brilliantly  lighted  hull  of  her — the  only 
undarkened  ship  of  the  hundreds  in  the  Firth  of 
Forth  that  night — as  I  saw  it  an  hour  before  day- 
break the  following  morning,  when  I  set  off  from 
the  Cassandra  in  a  motor  launch  to  be  present  in 
the  Queen  Elizabeth  during  the  historic  conference 
which  was  to  take  place  there  that  day.  Admiral 
Beatty  had  refused  to  receive  the  revolutionary 
delegates  at  the  preliminary  conference  which  had 
been  held  in  the  British  flagship  the  previous 
night,  and  as  a  consequence  it  appears  that  Ad- 


Into  German  Waters  11 

miral  Meurer  and  his  staff  were  summoned  to 
make  a  report  to  their  "superiors"  on  their  re- 
turn. This  strange  meeting  had  been  convened 
shortly  after  midnight  (so  the  captain  of  the  M.L., 
which  had  been  patrolling  round  the  Konigsberg 
all  night,  told  me),  but  still,  five  hours  later,  as 
"M.L.  262 "  slid  quietly  by  at  quarter  speed,  the 
rumble  of  guttural  Teutonic  voices  raised  in 
heated  argument  welled  out  of  the  open  scuttles 
of  what  had  probably  been  the  ward-room.  It  oc- 
curred to  me  even  then  that  this  rumble  of  angry 
dispute  was  prophetic  of  what  Germany  had  ahead 
in  the  long  night  that  was  closing  upon  her. 

Although  "M.L.  262"  ended  up  an  hour  later 
with  her  propellers  tangled  in  the  cable  of  Ox- 
Guard  boom,  I  managed  to  get  on  the  flagship  in 
time  to  see  Admiral  Meurer  and  his  party  come 
climbing  up  out  of  the  fog  to  her  quarter-deck. 
The  conference  lasted,  with  short  intervals,  un- 
til long  after  dark,  and  the  next  picture  I  saw 
was  that  of  five  German  naval  officers,  chagrined 
and  crestfallen,  being  piped  over  the  side  to  the 
barge  which  was  to  take  them  to  the  destroyer 
standing  by  in  the  fog  to  return  with  them  to  the 
Konigsberg  at  her  anchorage,  Inchkeith.  It  was 
"Officers'  Night"  for  the  kinema  in  the  "Q.E.," 
and  they  were  showing  a  "  made-in-Calif ornia " 
film  called  the  "Rise  and  Fall  of  Julius  Caesar." 


12  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

I  remember  distinctly  that  Casca  had  just  driven 
the  first  thrust,  and  the  mob  of  conspirators  were 
thronging  upon  Caesar  round  the  "base  of  Pom- 
pey's  statue, "  when  the  commander  sent  me  word 
that  the  guests  were  about  to  depart. 

The  captain  of  the  fleet,  the  captain,  the  com- 
mander, the  officer  of  the  watch  and  the  boatswain 
were  waiting  at  the  head  of  the  starboard  gang- 
way as  I  stepped  on  deck,  and  out  of  the  fog,  which 
had  thickened  till  I  could  not  see  the  muzzles  of 
the  guns  of  "Y"  turret,  the  Germans  were  ad- 
vancing from  aft.  The  frown  on  Admiral  Meu- 
rer's  heavy  brows  was  magnified  by  the  cross  light 
of  the  "yard-arm  group"  at  the  gangway,  and  his 
mouth,  with  its  thin  hard  lips,  showed  as  a  straight 
black  line.  With  a  click  of  the  heels  and  the  char- 
acteristic automaton  bow  of  the  German,  he 
saluted  the  British  officers  in  turn,  beginning  with 
the  captain  of  the  fleet,  stepped  down  the  short 
gangway  and  disappeared  into  the  waiting  barge 
to  the  shrilling  of  the  pipes.  Bowing  and  click- 
ing, the  others  followed  suit,  a  weedy  "sub," 
with  an  enormous  roll  of  papers  under  his  arm, 
going  over  last. 

The  Oak,  herself  invisible  in  the  fog,  groped 
blindly  with  her  searchlight  to  pick  up  the  barge. 
"We  must  hold  the  light  steady,"  facetiously 
quoted  the  Press  correspondent  at  my  elbow  from 


Into  German  Waters 

a  speech  of  President  Wilson's  which  had  ap- 
peared in  the  morning  papers,  and  then  added 
thoughtfully,  "It  may  be  a  light  that  kind  need 
for  guidance,  but  if  I  had  the  leading  of  them  for 
the  next  generation  it  would  be  by  a  ring  in  the 
nose." 

Now,  panorama  resumed.  It  was  the  day  of 
the  surrender,  and  the  Cardiff,  with  her  high- 
flown  kite  balloon  in  tow,  was  leading  the  line  of 
German  battle-cruisers  out  of  the  eastern  mist. 
I  was  watching  from  the  bridge  of  the  Erin,  and 
an  officer  beside  me,  recognizing  the  Seydlitz,  fly- 
ing the  rear-admiral's  flag,  in  the  lead,  with  the 
Moltke  and  Derfflinger  next  in  line,  told  how, 
from  the  light  cruiser  in  which  he  had  chased 
them  at  Dogger  Bank,  he  had  seen  at  least  two 
of  the  three,  leaving  the  Blucher  to  her  fate, 
dashing  for  the  shelter  of  their  minefields  with 
flames  swirling  about  their  mastheads.  Another 
spoke  casually  of  how,  in  the  Tiger  at  Jutland,  he 
had  been  for  a  wild  minute  or  two,  while  his  ship 
was  rounding  a  "windy  corner "  as  Beatty  turned 
north  to  meet  the  British  Battle  Fleet,  under  the 
concentrated  fire  of  all  the  battle-cruisers — with 
the  exception  of  the  Hindenburg,  but  with  the 
Lutzow  added — now  steaming  past  us.  We  re- 
marked the  "flattery  of  imitation "  in  the  resem- 
blance of  the  Hindenburg  with  her  long  run  of 


14  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

forecastle  and  " flare"  bows,  to  the  Repulse  and 
Renown,  and  of  the  symmetrical,  two-funnelled 
Bayern  as  she  appeared  between  the  Kaisers  and 
the  Konigs  in  the  German  battleship  line  to  the 
British  Queen  Elizabeth  class  laid  down  before 
the  war.  The  Queen  Elisabeth  herself,  falling 
out  of  line  to  take  the  salute  of  the  ships  of  the 
fleet  she  had  led  to  victory  as  they  passed,  brought 
that  reel  of  panorama  to  an  end. 

The  next  was  of  five  ships  of  the  Kaiser  class, 
as  they  had  appeared  from  the  Emperor  of  India, 
which,  with  the  rest  of  the  Second  Division,  was 
escorting  a  squadron  of  the  enemy  to  Scapa  for 
internment.  We  saw  the  German  ships  at  closer 
range  now,  and  the  better  we  saw  them  the  worse 
they  looked.  Their  fine  solidity  was  less  im- 
pressive than  from  a  distance,  for  now  our  glasses 
revealed  the  filth  of  the  decks,  the  lack  of  paint, 
and  the  slovenly,  sullen  attitude  of  the  motley 
garbed  figures  lounging  along  the  rails.  We 
passed  within  a  biscuit  toss  of  the  Kaiserin  when 
their  leading  ship,  the  Friedrich  der  Grosse,  lost 
her  bearings  in  some  way  and  failed  to  follow  the 
Canada  through  the  anti-submarine  boom  off  the 
end  of  Flotta,  an  action  which  only  the  smartest 
kind  of  seamanship  on  the  part  of  the  division  of 
Iron  Dukes  prevented  from  developing  into  a  seri- 
ous disaster.  Most  of  the  Huns — to  judge  by 


Into  German  Waters  15 

the  expression  on  the  faces  leering  across  at  us — 
would  have  welcomed  a  smash ;  but  it  was  avoided 
a  hair,  and  they  ultimately  straightened  them- 
elves  out,  straggled  through  into  the  Flow,  and 
on  to  their  more  or  less  final  resting-place,  off  the 
inner  entrance  to  Gutter  Sound. 

The  final  picture,  as  it  chanced,  which  my  fancy 
projected  on  the  curtain  of  the  fog  was  one  that 
embraced  what  I  saw  from  the  steam  pinnace 
which  was  taking  me  to  the  Imperieuse,  on  my  way 
back  to  Eosyth.  An  angry  Orkney  sunset  was 
flaring  over  the  hills  of  Hoy — a  sullenly  red  glow, 
gridironed  by  thin  strata  of  black  cloud  like  the 
bars  of  a  grate — and  a  sinister  squall  was  ad- 
vancing from  the  direction  of  Stromness  to  the 
northward.  For  a  few  moments  the  hot  light  of 
the  sunset  had  silhouetted  the  confused  hulls  of 
battleships  and  battle-cruisers  against  the  silvered 
seas  beyond,  and  revealed  the  disordered  phalanx 
of  the  moored  destroyers  blocking  the  mouth  of 
Gutter  Sound;  then  it  was  quenched  by  the  on- 
rush of  the  storm  clouds,  and  all  that  was  left  of 
the  High  Seas  Fleet  disappeared  into  shadow 
and  driving  rain. 

It  was  a  far  cry,  I  reflected,  from  the  Kaiser's 
"Our  future  lies  upon  the  seas!"  and  Admiral 
Bodman's  "The  German  ships  are  of  no  use  to 
anybody;  the  simplest  solution  of  the  problem 


16  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

of  their  disposition  is  to  take  the  whole  lot  to  sea 
and  sink  them. ' '  And  yet — 

Suddenly,  stereoscopically  clear,  on  the  blank 
sheet  of  the  fog  left  as  the  High  Sea  Fleet  faded 
from  sight,  the  head-on  silhouette  of  an  unmis- 
takably German  light  cruiser  appeared.  For  an 
instant  the  soaring  mast  and  the  broad  bridge 
suggested  that  my  fancy  had  materialized  the 
Konigsberg  again.  Then  the  rat-a-tat  of  a  signal 
searchlight  recalled  me  to  my  senses,  and  it  did 
not  need  the  chief  yeoman  of  signals'  " There 
she  is,  sir;  sending  away  a  boat  to  bring  us  a 
pilot, "  to  tell  me  we  had  finally  rendezvoused 
with  the  Regensburg.  I  descended  to  the  quarter- 
deck to  see  the  pilot  come  over  the  side. 

Very  smartly  handled  was  that  cutter  from  the 
Regensburg.  I  remember  that  especially  because 
it  was  almost  the  only  German  boat  that  came 
alongside  during  all  the  visit  which  did  not  either 
ram  the  gangway,  or  else  miss  it  more  than  the 
length  of  a  boat-hook.  They  explained  this  by 
saying  that  most  of  the  skilled  men  had  left  the 
navy,  and  that  their  boats,  as  a  consequence,  were 
in  the  hands  of  comparative  novices.  At  any  rate, 
at  least  one  first-class  crew  of  boat-pullers  had  re- 
mained in  the  Regensburg,  and  they  brought  their 
cutter  alongside  the  gangway  as  neatly  as  though 
the  Hercules  were  lying  in  harbour. 


Into  German  Waters 


17 


Three  men,  each  carrying  a  small  suit-case,  came 
over  the  side  and  saluted  the  officer  of  the  day 
and  the  intelligence  officer  of  the  admiral's  staff, 
who  awaited  them  at  the  head  of  the  gangway. 
The  first  was  a  three-stripe  officer  of  the  rank  the 
Germans  call  Korvettenkapitan,  the  "second  a  war- 
rant officer,  and  the  third  (as  we  presently  were 
informed)  a  qualified  merchant  pilot.  The 
Korvettenkapitan  was  slender  of  figure,  and  had 
a  well-bred,  gentlemanly  appearance  not  in  the 
least  suggestive  of  the  * '  Hunnishness ' '  one  asso- 
ciated— and  with  good  reason,  too,  as  subsequent 
experience  proved — with  the  German  naval  officer. 
His  flushed  expression  showed  plainly  that  he  felt 
deeply  the  humiliation  of  the  task  assigned  him  of 
taking  the  first  enemy  warships  into  a  German 
harbour.  His  head  remained  bowed  a  moment 
after  his  final  salute ;  then  he  took  a  deep  breath, 
squared  his  shoulders,  and  asked  to  be  conducted 
to  the  bridge  at  once  in  order  to  take  advantage 
of  the  improved  visibility  in  pushing  on  in  through 
the  minefields. 

If  one  felt  a  touch  of  involuntary  sympathy  for 
the  senior  naval  officer,  a  glance  at  the  sinister 
figure  of  the  merchant  pilot  was  an  efficacious 
antidote.  Thick-set  and  muscular  of  build,  with 
slack-hanging  ape-like  arms  and  bandy  legs,  his 
corded  bull  neck  was  crowned  with  the  prognath- 


18  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ous- jawed  head  of  a  gorilla,  and  a  countenance 
that  might  well  have  been  a  composite  of  the 
saturnine  phizzes  of  Trotsky  and  Liebknecht. 
One  knew  in  an  instant  that  here  was  the  super- 
Bolshevik,  and  looked  for  the  red  band  on  his 
sleeve,  which  could  only  have  been  temporarily  re- 
moved while  he  appeared  among  the  Englanders 
to  spy  upon  the  naval  officer  whom  the  revolution- 
ists would  not  permit  to  act  alone.  The  way 
things  stood  between  the  two  became  evident  al- 
most at  once,  for  the  officer  informed  the  British 
interpreter  at  the  first  opportunity  that  he  could 
not  be  responsible  for  the  pilot,  while  the  latter, 
when  some  query  from  the  Korvettenkapitan  re- 
specting the  position  of  a  certain  buoy  was  re- 
peated to  him,  contented  himself  with  drawing  his 
fingers  significantly  across  his  throat,  clucking 
in  apparent  imitation  of  a  severed  wind-pipe,  and 
continuing  the  guzzling  of  the  plate  of  "  kedgeree  " 
which  had  been  engaging  his  undivided  attention 
at  the  moment  of  interruption. 

After  putting  a  German  pilot  aboard  each  of 
the  four  destroyers,  the  Regensburg's  cutter  was 
hoisted  in,  and  we  got  under  weigh  again.  The 
visibility  had  improved  considerably,  and  pres- 
ently a  darker  blur  on  the  misty  skyline  resolved 
itself  into  the  familiar  profile  of  Heligoland.  At 
first  only  the  loom  of  the  great  cliff  was  dis- 


Into  German  Waters 


19 


cernible,  but  by  the  time  this  had  been  brought 
abeam  a  slender  strip  of  low-lying  ground  with 
warehouses,  cranes,  and  the  masts  of  ships,  was 
distinctly  visible.  All  hands  crowded  to  the  star- 
board side  to  have  a  glimpse  of  Germany's  famous 
island  outpost,  but  the  nearest  thing  to  a  demon- 
stration I  saw  was  by  two  marines,  who  were  doing 
a  bit  of  a  shuffle  on  the  precarious  footing  of  a 
turret  top  and  singing  lustily : 

"Oh,  won't  it  be  grand  out  in  Hel-i-go-land, 
"When  we've  wound  up  the  Watch  on  the  Rhine!" 

Whatever  illusions  they  had  formed  of  the 
"grandness"  of  Heligoland  they  were  allowed 
to  keep,  for  the  only  ones  who  were  given  to  see  at 
close  range  the  dismal  greyness  of  the  island  for- 
tress were  the  members  of  one  of  the  "air"  par- 
ties, who  made  a  hurried  visit  in  a  destroyer  to 
see  that  the  provisions  of  the  Armistice  had  been 
carried  out  at  the  seaplane  station. 

The  thickening  fog-banks  which  shut  off  our 
view  of  Heligoland  were  not  long  in  thinning  the 
guiding  Regensburg  to  a  dusky  phantom  nosing 
uncertainly  into  the  misty  smother  in  the  direction 
of  where  our  charts  indicated  the  Bight  should  be 
narrowing  to  the  shallow  waters  of  Jade  Bay,  in 
an  inner  corner  of  which  lay  Wilhelmshaven. 
We  had  counted  on  getting  there  that  evening,  and 


20  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

a  wireless  had  already  been  received  saying  that 
a  German  Naval  Commission  was  standing  by  to 
come  off  for  a  preliminary  conference.  After 
heading  in  for  a  couple  of  hours  through  seas 
which  I  heard  an  officer  coming  off  watch  describe 
as  "composed  of  about  equal  parts  of  water,  mis- 
placed buoys  and  floating  mines, "  all  hopes  of 
arriving  that  night  were  dashed  by  a  signal  from 
the  Regensburg,  saying  that  she  had  been  com- 
pelled to  anchor  on  account  of  the  fog.  Calling 
her  destroyer  ' '  chicks ' '  about  her  to  mother  them 
for  the  night,  the  Hercules  let  go  what  was  prob- 
ably the  first  anchor  a  British  surface  ship  had 
dropped  into  German  mud  since  the  outbreak  of 
the  war. 

The  unexpected  delay  made  it  necessary  for 
both  the  Hercules  and  the  destroyer  to  put  up  their 
pilots  for  the  night.  This  was  managed  in  the 
former  by  giving  the  officer  the  flag  captain 's  sea- 
cabin,  and  slinging  hammocks  for  his  two  assist- 
ants outside.  Doubtless  the  opportunity  to  enjoy 
a  change  of  food  was  not  unwelcome  to  any  of 
them.  They  were  served  with  the  regular  ward- 
room dinner.  The  officer  declined  the  offer  of 
drinks,  and  said  he  had  his  own  cigarettes.  The 
other  two  made  a  clean  sweep  of  anything  that 
they  could  get  hold  of.  Even  these  had  cigarettes, 
but  the  young  signalman  who  had  the  temerity  to 


Into  German  Waters  21 

smoke  one  which  was  proffered  him  in  exchange 
for  one  of  his  own,  advanced  that  as  an  excuse  for 
a  mess  he  made  of  taking  down  a  searchlight  sig- 
nal from  a  destroyer  two  hours  later. 

"That  -  -  Bolshevik, "  said  the  lad  the  next 
day,  in  telling  me  about  the  tragedy,  "declared 
the  fag  he  giv'  me  was  made  of  baccy  smuggled 
into  Germany  by  a  friend  of  his.  I  tells  him  that 
was  no  kind  of  reason  for  him  using  me  to  smug- 
gle the  smoke  out  of  Germany.  And  I  tells  him  it 
tastes  to  me  like  rope  end,  that  baccy,  and,  what's 
more,  that  I'd  be  very  happy  to  return  it  to  him 
with  a  rope  end.  I  can't  say  for  certain  whether 
he  twigged  that  little  joke  or  not." 

From  one  of  the  destroyers,  too,  there  came  the 
next  day  a  story  of  similar  friction  in  the  matter 
of  dispensing  hospitality  to  the  guest  of  the  night. 
The  latter,  unlike  the  one  who  was  sent  to  the 
Hercules,  appears  to  have  been  a  typical  Hun. 
Beginning  by  introducing  himself  as  a  relative  of 
the  ex-Kaiser,  he  ended  up  by  all  but  going  on 
strike  because  no  sheets  could  be  provided  for  the 
bunk  in  the  cabin  which — through  turning  out  its 
owner  to  "sling"  in  the  ward-room — had  been 
given  him  for  the  night.  That  alone  had  been  a 
considerable  concession  under  the  circumstances, 
for,  through  the  presence  of  two  extra  flying  offi- 
cers, two  "subs"  had  given  up  their  cabins,  and 


22  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

were  sleeping  in  the  ward-room  already.  It  must 
have  been  a  really  amusing  show  that  young  sprig 
of  Junkerism  put  up.  He  mentioned  the  matte? 
of  linen  several  times,  finally  rising  to  the  cres- 
cendo of  "I  must  have  the  sheets  by  nine  o'clock, 
and  it  now  lacks  but  five  minutes  of  that  time.'7  I 
was  never  able  to  verify  the  story  that  the  steward 
really  gave  him  the  sheets  of  notepaper  that  one 
of  the  Yankee  officers  volunteered  to  contribute. 
How  mad  the  young  exquisite  was  about  the  whole 
affair  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  he  left 
behind  him  in  the  morning  his  own  personal  and 
private  cake — only  slightly  used — of  toilet  soap. 
Whether  this  was  pure  swank — high  princely  dis- 
dain of  an  object  of  value — or  whether  he  was 
blind  with  passion  and  overlooked  it?  they  could 
never  quite  make  up  their  minds  in  the  F-  — . 

The  fog  lapped  and  curled  dankly  round  the 
Hercules  that  night,  wrapping  the  ship  in  a 
clammy  shroud  of  cold  moisture  that  dripped 
eerily  from  the  rigging  and  sent  a  chill  to  the  mar- 
row of  the  bones  of  the  men  and  officers  on  watch. 
But  below  there  was  warmth  and  comfort.  The 
ward-room  celebrated  the  occasion  with  a  "rag" 
to  the  music  of  its  own  Jazz  band,  while  in  the 
admiral's  cabin  the  kinema  man,  who  had  been 
brought  along  to  film  the  historic  features  of  the 
voyage,  entertained  with  a  movie  of  a  South  Amer- 


Into  German  Waters  23 

lean  revolution,  a  picture  full  of  the  play  of  hot 
passion  and  fierce  jealousy,  enacted  in  and  around 
an  ancient  castle  which  none  but  a  Californian 
could  have  recognized  as  a  building  of  the  recent 
San  Diego  Exposition.  ' '  The  Admiral  's  Movies, ' ' 
"With  a  Complete  Change  of  Program  Nightly," 
became  one  of  the  star  turns  of  the  voyage  from 
that  time  on. 

Cut  off  though  we  were  by  the  fog  from  sighting 
anything  farther  away  than  the  riding  lights  of 
the  nearest  destroyer,  strange  voices  of  the  new 
world  we  had  moved  into  since  morning  kept 
reaching  the  Hercules  on  the  wings  of  the  wire- 
less. Now  it  was  the  Regensburg  calling  to  say, 
"I  am  lying  off  Outer  Jade  Lightship  and  illumi- 
nating it  with  my  searchlight."  Not  much  help, 
that,  on  a  night  when  a  searchlight  itself  was 
quenched  to  a  will-o'-the-wisp  at  a  cable's  length. 
Then  there  was  a  message  from  the  main  fount 
of  some  "Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Council"  re- 
questing that  the  Allied  Naval  Commission  should 
receive  a  delegation  of  its  members  at  Wilhelms- 
haven.  It  was  not  a  long  message,  but  the  reply 
flashed  back  to  it  was,  I  understand,  a  good  deal 
shorter.  There  was  chatter  between  ship  and 
ship,  and  even  the  call — from  somewhere  in  the 
Baltic,  I  believe — of  a  steamer  in  distress.  The 
name  of  the  Mo  ewe,  in  an  otherwise  unintelligible 


24  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

message,  caused  hardly  the  flutter  it  would  have 
had  we  picked  it  up  in  the  same  waters  a  month 
earlier. 

There  was  little  news  to  us  in  a  message  from 
some  land  station  telling  all  and  sundry  that  the 
1 '  high-sea-ship ' '  Regensburg  was  " '  zn  Anker  bei 
aussen  Jade  Feuerschiff,"  that  the  Hercules  and 
destroyers  were  "  zu-  Anker  bei  Weser  Feuer- 
schiff," and  that  there  was  "noch  Nebel."  The 
Regensburg  had  already  told  us  where  she  was  and 
our  own  position  we  knew:  also  the  fact  that  "fog 
continues." 

A  groan  from  Germany  in  travail  reached  us 
in  a  message  from  the  "Soldatenrat"  of  the 
"Fortress  of  Borkum"  to  the  Council  in  Berlin. 
They  disapproved  most  heartily  of  the  attitude  of 
the  meeting  of  the  "Gross  Berliner"  councils  for 
Greater  Germany.  They  greatly  regretted  the  at- 
tempt of  one  part  of  the  people  to  establish  a  dic- 
tatorship over  another,  and  considered  that  this 
showed  a  lamentable  lack  of  confidence  in  "un- 
serem  Volke" — "our  people. "  "Wir  wollen 
Demokratie  und  keine  Diktatur,"  they  concluded; 
"we  want  a  democracy  and  no  dictator. " 

Then  we  heard  the  German  battleship  Konig 
(which,  in  company  with  the  Dresden,  a  destroyer 
and  two  transports,  we  had  sighted  that  morning 
tardily  en  voyage  to  make  up  the  promised  quota 


Into  German  Waters 


25 


?apa)  calling  to  the  Revenge — at  that  time  the 
flagship  of  the  squadron  watching  the  interned 
ships — for  guidance.  "Am  near  to  the  point  of 
assembly  with  the  other  ships, "  she  said  in  Ger- 
man, "and  bad  weather  is  coming  on.  Cannot 
stop  with  Dresden  in  tow.  What  course  can  I 
take  from  point  of  assembly! " 

Deep  called  to  deep  when  the  C.-in-C.  of  the 
Grand  Fleet  at  Eosyth  told  the  C.-in-C.  of  the 
High  Sea  Fleet  what  arrangements  were  being 
made  to  send  back  the  surplus  crews  of  the  in- 
terned ships,  and  for  a  while  the  vibrant  ether  let 
fall  such  familiar  names  as  Karlsruhe,  Emden, 
Niirnberg,  Hindenburg,  Kaiser,  Von  der  Tann  and 
Friedrich  der  Grosse,  men  from  all  of  which,  we 
learned,  were  to  be  started  homeward  in  a  trans- 
port called  the  Pretoria. 

There  was  hint  of  * '  family  trouble ' '  in  the  Ger- 
man Navy  in  a  signal  from  Admiral  Von  Reuter 
at  Scapa  to  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  High 
Sea  Fleet  at  Wilhelmshaven.  "Request  that 
third  group  (of  transports)  may  include  a  flag 
officer  to  relieve  me,"  it  ran  in  translation,  "as  I 
am  returning  home  with  it  on  account  of  sickness. " 

That  signal,  I  think,  gave  the  ward-room  more 
quiet  enjoyment  than  any  of  the  others,  for  it  was 
the  first  forerunning  flutter  of  the  German  wings 
beginning  to  beat  against  the  bars  of  Scapa. 


26  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

"I've  often  been  a  prey  to  that  same  complaint 
during  our  four  years  at  Scapa,"  said  the  com- 
mander musingly,  in  the  interval  following  the 
passing  round  of  the  wireless  wail.  "Of  course 
Admiral  Von  Eeuter  is  sick — homesick.  Who 
wasn't?  Who  isn't?  But  there  was  no  use  in 
sending  a  signal  to  any  one  complaining  about  it. 
But  isn't  it  worth  just  about  all  we  went  through 
in  sticking  it  there  for  four  years  to  be  able  to 
think  of  the  Huns  being  interned  there,  and  in 
their  own  ships?  They're  not  quite  so  comfy  as 
ours  to  live  in,  you  know.  I  wonder  what  Herr 
C.-in-C.'s  answer  will  be." 

That  answer  was  picked  up  in  good  time. 
"First  group  of  transports  have  arrived  back 
safely, ' '  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  High  Sea 
Fleet  began  inconsequentially,  adding  abruptly, 
"Admiral  Von  Eeuter  is  advised  to  stay  where  he 
is,  if  at  all  possible."  That  pleased  the  ward- 
room so  much  that  the  Junior  Officers'  Glee  Club 
was  sent  to  the  piano  to  create  a  "Scapa  atmos- 
phere" by  singing  songs  of  the  strenuous  early 
months  of  the  war.  '  '  Coaling,  coaling,  coaling,  al- 
ways jolly  well  coaling,"  to  the  air  of  "Holy,  Holy, 
Holy!"  reached  my  ears  even  in  the  secluded  re- 
treat of  the  "commission-room,"  to  which  I  had 
retired  to  write  up  my  diary. 

But  the  most  amusing  message  of  all  was  one 


Into  German  Waters  27 

which  the  senior  interpreter — one  time  a  distin- 
guished Cambridge  professor  of  modern  lan- 
guages— was  dragged  out  of  his  bunk  at  something 
like  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  translate. 
Everything  sent  out  in  German  was  being  meshed 
in  our  wireless  net  on  the  off-chance  that  informa- 
tion of  importance  might  be  picked  up,  and,  for 
some  reason,  the  message  in  question  impressed 
the  night  operator — as  it  lay  before  him,  fresh 
caught,  upon  his  pad,  as  being  of  especial  signifi- 
cance. This  was  what  I  deciphered  on  the  sheet 
of  naval  signal  paper  which  the  senior  inter- 
preter, returning  all  a-shiver  to  his  bunk  after 
making  the  desired  translation  in  the  coding  room, 
threw  at  my  head  when  I  awoke  in  the  next  bunk 
and  asked  -sleepily  for  the  news. 

(f)to(f). 

"Good  morning.    Eequest  the  time  accord- 
ing to  you.     My  watch  is  fast,  I  think. " 

It  was  probably  from  the  skipper  of  one  trawler 
to  his  "opposite  number"  in  another.    It  was 

on  my  lips  to  ask  Lieut.  B if  he  expected  to 

be  called  when  the  reply  was  picked  up,  but  the 
ominous  glare  in  the  unpillowed  eye  he  turned  in 
my  direction  as  I  started  to  speak  made  me  change 
my  mind. 


28  To  Kiel  in  the  "Hercules" 

The  fog  was  still  thick  at  daybreak  of  the  fol- 
lowing morning,  but  by  ten  o'clock  the  visibility 
had  improved  sufficiently  to  appear  to  make  it 
worth  while  to  get  under  weigh.  Heading  easterly 
at  twelve  knots,  we  shortly  came  to  a  buoy-marked 
channel  which,  according  to  our  directions,  prom- 
ised to  lead  in  to  the  anchqrage  off  Wilhelmshaven 
we  desired  to  reach.  The  Regensburg,  which  had 
evidently  gone  in  ahead,  was  not  sighted  again, 
but  two  powerful  armed  patrol  boats  came  out  to 
keep  us  company.  It  was  soon  possible  to  see  for 
several  miles,  the  low  line  of  the  Frisian  coast 
coming  into  sight  to  port  and  starboard. 

Presently  we  passed,  on  opposite  courses,  a 
German  merchant  steamer.  Luckily,  some  one  on 
the  bridge  observed  in  time  that  she  had  a  man 
standing  by  the  flag  halyards  at  her  -stern,  and  so 
we  were  prepared  to  return  with  the  white  ensign 
what  must  have  been  the  first  dip  a  British  ship 
had  had  from  a  German  since  August,  1914. 
When  the  second  and  third  steamers  encountered 
also  dipped  their  red,  white,  and  black  bunting, 
followed  by  similar  action  on  the  part  of  two 
tugs  and  a  lighthouse  tender,  it  became  evident 
that  general  orders  in  that  connection  had  been 
issued.  That  was  our  first  hint  of  the  "  concilia- 
tory "  tactics  which  it  soon  became  apparent  all 
of  that  part  of  Northern  Germany  with  which 


Into  German  Waters  29 

there  was  a  chance  of  any  of  the  Allied  Naval 
Armistice  Commission  coming  in  contact  had  been 
instructed  to  follow. 

The  steeples  and  factory  chimneys  of  Wilhelms- 
haven  began  appearing  over  the  port  bow  at  noon, 
and  a  half -hour  later  Hercules  had  dropped  anchor 
about  a  mile  off  a  long  stone  mole  which  curved 
out  from  the  dockyard.  Almost  immediately  a 
launch  was  >seen  putting  out  of  the  entrance,  and 
presently  it  came  bumping  alongside  the  star- 
board gangway.  Bear-Admiral  Goette,  a  smooth- 
shaven,  heavy  set  man  of  about  fifty,  was  the 
first  up  to  the  quarter-deck,  where  his  salute  was 
returned  by  the  captain,  commander,  the  officer 
of  the  day,  and  several  officers  of  Admiral  Brown- 
ing's staff.  His  puckered  brow  indicated  some- 
thing of  the  mental  strain  he  was  under,  a  strain 
the  effects  of  which  became  more  and  more  evi- 
dent every  time  he  came  off  for  a  conference. 

The  thirteen  other  members  of  the  Commission 
under  Admiral  Goette  rs  presidency  followed  him 
up  the  gangway.  The  first  of  these,  a  tall  blond 
officer  of  fine  bearing,  was  on  the  list  as  Kapitan 
z.  S.  von  Miiller,  but  it  was  not  until  after  the  final 
conference,  over  a  fortnight  later,  that  we  learned 
for  certain  that  he  was  the  able  and  resolute  com- 
mander of  the  Emden,  famous  in  the  first  year  of 
the  war  for  her  destruction  of  Allied  commerce 


30  To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

and  the  fine  fight  he  had  put  up  before  being  forced 
to  the  beach  of  North  Cocos  Island  by  the  faster 
and  heavier  armed  Sydney.  If  it  was  a  fact,  as 
has  been  suggested,  that  the  Germans  put  Von 
Miiller  on  their  Naval  Armistice  Commission  be- 
cause of  the  admiration  that  had  been  expressed 
in  the  British  papers  of  his  brave  and  sporting 
conduct  on  the  latter  occasion,  the  effect  of  this 
fine  piece  of  Teutonic  subtlety  was  completely  lost. 
As  I  have  said,  his  real  identity  was  not  discovered 
until  the  last  of  the  conferences  was  over. 

As  soon  as  the  last  of  the  German  officers  had 
reached  the  quarter-deck  and  completed  his  round 
of  heel-clicking  salutes,  the  party  was  conducted 
directly  to  Admiral  Browning's  cabin,  where  the 
first  of  a  series  of  conferences  calculated  deeply 
to  influence  Germany's  naval  future  for  many 
years  to  come  was  entered  into  without  delay. 


n 


GETTING   DOWN    TO   WORK 

AN  unfailing  test  of  the  treatment  the  Germans 
would  have  meted  out  to  the  Allies  had  their  re- 
spective positions  been  reversed  during  the  armis- 
tice interval,  was  furnished  by  the  attitude  of 
all  the  enemy  people — from  the  highest  official  rep- 
resentatives to  the  crowds  on  the  streets — with 
whom  Admiral  Browning's  Naval  Commission 
was  thrown  in  contact.  This  was  especially  no- 
ticeable in  the  case  of  naval  officers,  and  with  none 
of  these  more  so  than  with  the  greater  part  of 
those  constituting  the  commission,  presided  over 
by  Rear-Admiral  Goette,  which  met  the  Allied 
Commission  to  arrange  the  details  of  carrying  out 
the  provisions  of  the  armistice  relating  to  mari- 
time affairs.  Fully  expecting  from  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  victorious  Allies  the  same  treat- 
ment they  had  extended  to  the  beaten  Russians  at 
Brest-Litovsk,  and  the  beaten  Rumanians  at 
Bucharest,  they  adopted  from  the  outset  an  atti- 
tude of  sullen  distrust,  evidently  with  the  idea  that 
it  was  the  one  best  calculated  to  minimize  the 
concessions  they  would  be  called  upon  to  make. 

31 


32  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

When  it  transpired  that  the  Allied  commissioners 
appeared  to  have  no  intention  of  exercising  their 
victor's  prerogative  of  humiliating  the  emissaries 
of  a  beaten  enemy — as  no  Prussian  could  ever  have 
refrained  from  doing  in  similar  circumstances— 
but  that,  on  the  other  hand,  the  former  were 
neither  disposed  to  bargain,  "negotiate,"  nor  in 
any  way  to  abate  one  whit  from  their  just  de- 
mands, the  attitude  of  the  Germans  changed  some- 
what. They  were  more  reasonable  and  easy  to 
deal  with;  yet  to  the  last  there  was  always  dis- 
cernible that  feeling  of  thinly  veiled  contempt 
which  the  beaten  bully  cannot  conceal  for  a  victor 
who  fails  to  treat  him  as  he  himself  would  have 
treated  any  adversary  he  had  downed. 

The  opening  conference  between  the  Allied  and 
German  commissions  was  held  in  Admiral  Brown- 
ing's dining  cabin  in  the  Hercules,  as  were  all  of 
those  which  followed.  The  German  officers,  leav- 
ing their  overcoats  and  caps  in  a  cabin  set  aside 
for  them  as  an  ante-room,  were  conducted  to  the 
conference  room,  where  the  heads  of  the  Allied 
Commission  were  already  assembled  and  in  their 
places.  Most  of  the  Germans  were  in  frock  coats 
(of  fine  material  and  extremely  well  cut),  with 
small  dirk-like  swords  at  hip,  and  much-bemed- 
alled.  There  was  none  of  them,  so  far  as  one 
could  see,  without  one  grade  or  another  of  the 


Getting  Down  to  Work 


33 


Iron  Cross,  worn  low  on  the  left  breast  (or  just 
about  over  the  liver,  to  locate  it  more  exactly), 
with  its  black-and-white  ribbon  rove  through  a 
lapel.  Only  Captain  Von  Miiller  wore  the  cov- 
eted "Pour  le  Merite,"  doubtless  for  his  com- 
merce destruction  with  the  Emden.  Admiral 
Goette  wore  two  rows  of  ribbons,  but  none  of  the 
decorations  themselves. 

The  Allied  delegates  rose  as  the  Germans  en- 
tered, remaining  standing  until  the  latter  had  been 
shown  to  the  places  assigned  them.  At  the  right 
of  the  main  table,  as  seen  from  the  door,  was 
seated  Admiral  Browning,  with  Rear-Admiral 
Grasset,  of  the  French  Navy,  on  his  right,  and 
Bear-Admiral  Robinson,  of  the  American  Navy, 
on  his  left.  Captain  Lowndes,  Admiral  Brown- 
ing 's  Chief  of  Staff,  sat  next  to  Admiral  Robin- 
son, in  the  fourth  chair  on  the  Allied  side  of  the 
table.  The  Flag  Lieutenants  of  the  French  and 
American  Admirals,  and  the  two  officers  repre- 
senting respectively  Japan  and  Italy,  occupied 
chairs  immediately  beyond  the  senior  officers  of 
the  Commission.  At  two  smaller  tables  in  the 
rear  were  several  British  Flag  officers,  with  secre- 
taries and  stenographers.  The  official  British  in- 
terpreter, Lieut.  Bullough,  R.N.V.R.,  sat  at  the 
head  of  the  table.  The  heads  of  the  Allied  sub- 
commissions  representing  the  flying  services  and 


34  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

shipping  did  not  occupy  seats  during  all  of  the 
conference,  but  were  called  in  during  the  discus- 
sion of  matters  in  which  they  were  interested. 

Admiral  Goette  was  seated  directly  opposite 
Admiral  Browning  at  the  main  table,  with  Com- 
mander (or  Korvettenkapitan)  Hinzman  on  his 
right,  and  Commander  Lohman  on  his  left.  The 
former — a  shifty-eyed  individual,  with  a  pasty 
complexion  and  a  "mobile"  mouth  which,  in  its 
peculiar  expansions  and  contractions,  furnished 
an  accurate  index  of  the  state  of  its  owner 's  mind 
— was  from  the  General  Naval  Staff  in  Berlin, 
which  accounted,  doubtless,  for  the  fact  that  Ad- 
miral Goette  turned  to  him  for  advice  in  connec- 
tion with  practically  every  question  discussed. 
Commander  Lohman  had  charge  of  merchant  ship- 
ping interests,  which  were  principally  in  connec- 
tion with  the  return  of  British  tonnage  interned 
in  German  harbours  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 
Captain  Von  Miiller  sat  at  the  left-hand  corner  of 
the  table,  and  Captain  Bauer,  Chief  of  Staff,  in  the 
corresponding  place  on  the  right.  At  a  smaller 
table  opposite  the  door  the  eight  remaining  Ger- 
man officers  were  seated.  These  were  mostly  en- 
gineers, or  from  the  flying  or  submarine  services, 
and  were  consulted  as  questions  in  their  respective 
lines  arose  from  time  to  time. 

Without  wasting   time   in   preliminaries,   Ad- 


MEMBERS      OF      THE      ALLIED      NAVAL      COMMISSION,      ADMIRAL 
BROWNING   IN    CENTER 


THE  ALLIED  NAVAL  COMMISSION  AND  STAFF,  TAKEN  ON  BOARD 

"HERCULES" 


t 


Getting  Down  to  Work 


35 


miral  Browning  got  down  to  business  at  once  by 
intimating  that,  since  the  time  which  he  could  re- 
main in  German  waters  was  limited,  it  would  be 
desirable  that  the  very  considerable  number  of 
visits  of  inspection  necessary  to  satisfy  the  Com- 
mission that  the  terms  of  the  armistice  had  been 
complied  with  should  begin  without  delay.  The 
Germans  had  a  formidable  array  of  reasons  ready 
to  show  why  all,  or  nearly  all,  of  these  visits  would 
be  practically  out  of  the  question.  The  disturbed 
state  of  the  country,  the  uncertain  situation  in 
Berlin,  the  lack  of  discipline  among  the  men  re- 
maining in  the  ships  and  at  the  air  stations,  the 
shortage  of  petrol,  the  possibility  of  the  hostility 
of  the  people  in  some  sections — such  as  Hamburg 
and  Bremen — to  Allied  visitors — these  were  a  few 
of  the  reasons  advanced  why  it  would  be  difficult 
or  dangerous  to  go  to  this  place  or  that,  and  why 
the  best  and  simplest  way  would  be  to  be  content 
with  the  assurance  of  the  German  Commission 
that  everything,  everywhere,  was  just  as  the  ar- 
mistice terms  had  stipulated.  Of  course,  at  Wil- 
helmshaven,  where  things  were  quiet  at  the  mo- 
ment, and  where  they  still  had  a  certain  amount 
of  authority,  there  should  be  no  great  difficulty  in 
going  over  the  remaining  warships  and  visiting 
the  air-station;  but  as  for  going  to  Hamburg,  or 
Bremen,  or  visiting  any  of  the  more  distant  naval 


36  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

air  stations — that  was  impossible  at  the  present. 

Asked  bluntly,  if  the  search  of  the  warships 
could  begin  that  afternoon,  Admiral  Goette  re- 
plied that  it  was  impossible,  for  the  reason  he  was 
not  yet  in  a  position  to  guarantee  the  personal 
safety  of  any  parties  landing  even  at  the  dock- 
yard. Moreover,  he  would  not  be  in  position  to 
give  such  a  guarantee  until  the  matter  had  been 
discussed  with  the  Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Coun- 
cil. Of  course,  if  the  party  cared  to  take  the 
chance  of  landing  without  a  guarantee  of  safety— 

That  was  really  just  about  as  far  as  that  first 
conference  got  in  the  way  of  definite  arrange- 
ments, or  even  assurances.  Admiral  Goette  was 
given  very  plainly  to  understand,  however,  that  it 
was  the  intention  of  the  Allied  Commission  to  visit 
and  inspect,  in  accordance  with  the  terms  laid 
down  in  the  armistice,  not  only  'all  of  the  remain- 
ing German  warships,  but  also  all  interned  British 
merchantmen,  irrespective  of  where  they  were, 
and  all  naval  airship  and  seaplane  stations,  on  the 
Baltic  as  well  as  the  North  Sea  side.  Also,  that 
full  and  complete  guarantee  of  the  safety  of  every 
party  landed  must  be  given  before  the  first  visit 
was  made.  Failing  this,  it  would  be  necessary  for 
the  Commission  to  return  to  England  and  report 
that  the  assistance  promised  by  Germany  in  carry- 
ing out  the  armistice  terms  had  not  been  given. 


Getting  Down  to  Work  37 

deep  corrugation  in  Admiral  Goette's  brow 
grew  deeper  still  when  he  heard  this  plain  warn- 
ing, 'and  the  corners  of  his  hard  cynical  mouth 
drew  down  at  the  corners  as  the  thin  lips  were 
compressed  in  his  effort  at  self-control.  Shuffling 
uneasily  in  his  chair,  he  leaned  over  as  though  to 
speak  to  the  sardonic  Hinzman  on  his  right,  but 
thought  better  of  it,  and  straightened  up  again. 
Then  his  deep-set  eyes  wandered  to  the  large-scale 
map  of  the  Western  Front  which  occupied  most 
of  the  wall  of  the  cabin  toward  which  he  faced. 
The  row  of  pins,  which  had  marked  the  line  of  the 
Front  at  the  moment  of  the  armistice,  but  had  now 
been  moved  up  and  over  the  Ehine  in  three  pro- 
tuberant bridgeheads,  evidently  brought  home  to 
him  the  futility  of  any  further  circumlocutions 
for  the  present.  The  muscles  of  the  aggressively 
squared  shoulders  relaxed,  the  combative  lines  of 
the  face  melted  into  furrows  of  deepest  depres- 
sion, and  the  pugnacious  jaw  was  drawn  in  as  the 
iron-grey  head  was  bowed  in  submission.  His 
throaty  "It  shall  be  done  as  you  say,  sir,"  told 
that  the  first  lesson  had  sunk  home. 

An  undertaking  on  the  part  of  the  German  Com- 
mission to  secure,  and  to  send  off  at  an  as  early 
hour  as  practicable  the  following  morning,  the 
required  "safe  conduct,"  brought  the  first  con- 
ference to  a  close.  The  kinema  man,  who  endeav- 


38  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

oured  to  take  a  picture  of  the  departure  from 
cover,  in  order  not  to  offend  the  sensibilities  of 
his  distinguished  subjects,  spoiled  a  film  as  a  con- 
sequence of  his  consideration.  Observing  that 
the  galley  scuttle  opened  out  upon  the  quarter- 
deck, but  not  (in  his  haste)  that  the  pots  of  beans 
simmering  on  the  range  were  filling  the  air  with 
clouds  of  steam  as  thick  as  fragrant,  set  up  his 
machine  just  inside.  Engrossed  in  turning  the 
crank  as  one  Hun  after  another  went  through  his 
heel-clicking  round  of  salutes,  he  failed  to  notice 
the  translucent  mask  of  moisture  condensing  on  his 
lens.  The  natural  result  was  that  this  particular 
reel  of  film,  when  it  came  to  be  developed,  had  very 
little  to  differentiate  it  from  another  reel  he  ex- 
posed the  following  morning  on  the  men  "  doubling 
round/'  the  latter  having  been  taken  with  the  cap 
over  the  lens. 

The  situation  as  it  presented  itself  that  evening 
was  far  from  encouraging.  Having  no  informa- 
tion whatever  of  our  own  as  to  conditions  ashore, 
we  had,  perforce,  to  take  the  word  of  the  Ger- 
mans that  many  of  the  projected  visits  of  inspec- 
tion could  only  be  undertaken  subject  to  much 
difficulty  and  delay,  if  at  all.  There  was  not  even 
positive  assurance  that  a  safe  conduct  would  be 
forthcoming  for  the  landing  in  Wilhelmshaven, 
where  the  headquarters  of  the  German  Naval  Com- 


Getting  Down  to  Work  39 

mand  were  located  at  the  moment,  and  where  there 
had  been  a  minimum  of  disorder.  The  wireless 
caught  ominous  fragments  pointing  to  an  immi- 
nent coup  d'etat  in  Berlin,  while  rioting  was  al- 
ready taking  place  in  Hamburg  and  Bremen,  and 
Kiel  was  completely  under  the  control  of  the  work- 
men and  soldiers.  It  certainly  looked  as  though, 
the  armistice  agreement  notwithstanding,  we  had 
struck  Northern  Germany  in  the  closed  season  for 
touring. 

A  ray  of  light  in  the  gloom  which  hung  over 
the  ship  that  night  came  in  the  form  of  two  British 
prisoners  of  war  who  managed  to  induce  a  Ger- 
man launch  they  had  found  at  the  quay  to  bring 
them  off  to  the  Hercules.  Cheery  souls  they  were, 
after  all  their  two  years  of  starvation  and  rough 
treatment  in  one  of  the  worst  prison  camps  in 
Germany.  When  the  armistice  was  signed,  they 
said,  they  had  been  released,  given  a  ticket  which 
was  made  out  to  carry  them  in  the  Fourth  or 
"Military"  class  on  any  German  railway,  and  told 
they  were  free  to  go  home.  This  appears  to  have 
been  done  at  a  good  many  prison  camps,  and  where 
these  were  within  a  few  days '  march  of  the  West- 
ern Front,  or  of  Holland,  it  probably  saved  a  good 
deal  of  time  over  waiting  for  regular  transport 
by  the  demoralized  and  congested  railway  sys- 
tems. The  cruelty  of  this  criminal  evasion  of  re- 


40  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

sponsibility  was  most  felt  in  the  parts  of  the  coun- 
try more  remote  from  the  Western  Front,  where 
many  hundreds  of  miles  had  to  be  covered  before 
the  prisoners  had  any  chance  of  getting  in  touch 
with  friends.  In  the  cases  of  most  of  these  un- 
fortunate derelicts  long  delays  were  inevitable, 
and,  not  infrequently,  much  hardship.  There  was 
little  interference,  apparently,  with  the  exercise 
of  the  travel  privilege,  but  the  almost  total  ab- 
sence of  authoritative  information  concerning  the 
departure  of  ships  from  Baltic  ports,  by  which 
considerable  numbers  of  British  were  repatriated 
via  Denmark  and  Sweden,  resulted  in  an  almost 
interminable  series  of  wanderings. 

The  case  of  the  two  men  I  have  mentioned  was 
typical  of  the  experiences  undergone  by  prisoners 
from  camps  in  northern  or  central  Germany.  Re- 
leased, as  I  have  described,  when  the  armistice  was 
signed,  they  had  broken  away  from  their  fellows, 
the  bulk  of  whom  were  starting  to  drift  toward  the 
Western  Front,  and  struck  out  for  the  North  Sea 
coast,  acting  on  the  theory  that  navigation  would 
be  opened  up  at  once,  and  that  this  route,  there- 
fore, would  offer  the  easiest  and  quickest  way  of 
getting  home.  Well  off  for  money  and  fairly  con- 
siderately treated  on  the  food  score,  they  found 
travelling  simple  enough,  but  extremely  tedious 
and  full  of  delays.  Arriving  at  Emden,  they 


Getting  Down  to  Work 


41 


learned  that  -there  had  been  no  provision  whatever 
made  for  dispatching  ships  with  prisoners  from 
there,  and  that — both  on  account  of  the  lack  of 
shipping  and  the  danger  of  navigating  the  still  un- 
swept  minefields — there  was  no  prospect  of  any- 
thing of  the  kind  in  the  near  future.  Instead  of 
crossing  over  the  neighbouring  frontier  of  Hol- 
land, as  they  might  easily  have  done,  they  pushed 
north  to  Bremen  and  Hamburg  on  the  chance  that 
there  might  be  ships  from  one  of  these  formerly 
busy  ports  by  which  they  could  find  their  way  back 
to  England.  Disappointed  again,  they  were  about 
to  go  on  to  Kiel,  when  they  read  in  a  newspaper 
of  the  arrival  of  a  British  battleship  at  Wilhelms- 
haven.  Eightly  conjecturing  that  they  were  at 
last  on  the  "home  trail/'  they  effected  the  best 
series  of  connections  possible  to  the  once  great 
naval  base,  where  no  obstacles  were  placed  in  the 
way  of  their  getting  put  off  to  the  Hercules  with- 
out delay. 

As  the  Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Council  had 
been  endeavouring  to  establish  touch  with  the 
Commission  ever  since  the  arrival  of  the  Hercules 
in  German  waters,  and  as  the  way  the  "authori- 
ties ' '  had  co-operated  in  getting  these  men  put  off 
to  the  ship  looked  just  a  bit  suspicious,  it  was  only 
natural  that  the  latter  should  be  put  through  a 
very  thorough  examination  calculated  to  establish 


42  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules7' 

their  identity  as  British  prisoners  beyond  a  doubt. 
This  was  being  proceeded  with  by  the  Commander 
and  the  Major  of  Marines  in  a  room  of  the  after 
superstructure,  when  a  steward  came  up  from  the 
galley  to  ask  what  the  new  arrivals  would  like  to 
have  for  supper.  There  was  quite  a  list  to  choose 
from,  it  appears.  They  could  have  roast  beef, 
said  the  steward,  or  sausage  and  "  mashed, "  or 
steak  and  kidney  pie,  or — "Stop  right  there, 
mytey,"  cut  in  one  of  the  men,  raising  his  hand 
with  the  gesture  of  a  crossings  policeman  halting 
the  flow  of  the  traffic.  "No  use  goin'  any  fur- 
ther. '  Styke  an '  kidney '  f  er  mine. ' '  Then,  turn- 
ing to  the  Commander  apologetically,  "Begging 
your  pardon,  sir,  but  wot  was  it  you  was  askin' 
'bout  wot  engagement  we  wus  captured  in V '  "I 
don't  think  we  need  trouble  any  further  about 
that,  my  man,"  replied  the  Commander  with  a 
grin.  "That  'styke  an'  kidney'  marks  you  for 
British  all  right,  and  if  you  '11  vouch  for  your  mate 
here,  we'll  take  your  word  that  he's  on  the  level 
too.  We'll  send  you  home  by  the  first  mail 
destroyer,  and  be  glad  of  the  chance  to  do  it. 
That  won't  be  for  a  couple  of  days  yet,  but  I  dare 
say  you'll  be  able  to  make  yourself  at  home  in 
the  Hercules  until  then." 

As  the  first  of  the  hundred  or  more  prisoners 
for  whom  the  Hercules  ultimately  acted   as   a 


ing  Down  to  Work  43 

" clearing  house"  in  passing  home  to  England, 
these  two  men  were  very  welcome  on  their  own  ac- 
count, but  especially  so  for  the  news  they  brought 
of  conditions  ashore.  It  was  quiet  everywhere 
they  had  been  in  Northern  Germany,  they  said. 
Nobody  was  starving,  and  where  the  people  took 
any  notice  of  them  at  all,  it  was — since  the  armis- 
tice— invariably  of  a  friendly  character.  "Wy, 
'pon  my  word,  sir,"  said  one  of  them,  where  I 
found  him  that  night  in  a  warm  corner  of  one  of 
the  mess  decks,  the  centre  of  an  admiring  circle  of 
matelots,  who  were  crowding  in  with  offerings  of 
everything  from  mugs  of  bitter  beer  to  cakes  of 
chocolate;  "  'pon  my  word,  all  you  'avc  to  do  is 
to  tyke  a  kyke  o '  perfumed  soap  to  the  beach  when 
you  land,  an*  they'll  all  come  an*  eat  right  out  o' 
yer  'and.  Wy>  the  gurls — " 

Although  the  Allied  Naval  Armistice  Commis- 
sion could  hardly  be  expected  to  smooth  its  way 
with  "kykes  o'  perfumed  soap,"  yet  all  these  men 
had  to  tell,  in  that  it  went  to  prove  how  greatly  the 
officers  of  the  German  Commission  had  (to  use  a 
charitable  term)  exaggerated  the  difficulties  to  be 
encountered  in  getting  about  ashore,  was  distinctly 
encouraging.  Indeed,  it  left  those  of  us  who 
talked  with  them  quite  prepared  to  expect  the 
"guarantee  of  safety,"  which  came  off  in  the 
morning,  with  word  that  arrangements  had  been 


44  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

made  for  parties  to  land  at  once  for  the  inspection 
of  warships  and  the  seaplane  station.  It  even 
forecasted  the  message  received  in  the  course  of 
the  afternoon,  to  the  effect  that  conditions  now  ap- 
peared to  be  favourable  to  the  arranging  of  visits 
to  Norderney,  Borkhum,  Nordholz,  and  the  other 
seaplane  and  Zeppelin  stations  which  the  Allied 
Commission  had  expressed  a  desire  to  see.  The 
Hamburg  visit  was  still  in  the  air,  pending  the  re- 
ceipt of  guarantees  of  safety,  but  there  was  no 
longer  any  doubt  that  it  would  be  arranged,  and, 
moreover,  as  promptly  as  the  Commission  saw  fit 
to  insist  upon. 

For  the  purpose  of  the  search  of  warships,  and 
the  inspection  of  merchant  ships  and  air  stations, 
the  staff  of  the  Allied  Commission  had  been  di- 
vided into  several  parties.  The  senior  party, 
which  was  to  confine  its  work  entirely  to  warships 
and  land  fortifications,  had  at  least  one  member 
of  each  of  the  Allied  nationalities  represented  in 
the  Commission.  The  head  of  it  was  the  Flag 
Commander  of  the  Hercules,  and  the  technical 
duties  in  connection  with  its  work  devolved  prin- 
cipally upon  the  British  and  American  naval 
gunnery  experts  which  it  always  included,  and  at 
least  one  engineer  officer. 

There  were  two  "air"  parties,  one  for  the  in- 
spection of  seaplane  stations,  and  the  other  for 


Getting  Down  to  Work  45 

that  of  airship  stations.  The  senior  flying  officer 
was  Brigadier-General  Masterman,  B.A.F.,  who 
was  one  of  England's  pioneers  in  the  development 
of  lighter-than-air  machines,  his  experience  dating 
back  to  the  experiments  with  the  ill-fated  Mayfly. 
His  interest  was  in  Zeppelins,  and  he  had  the 
leadership  of  the  party  formed  for  the  inspection 
of  airship  stations.  This  party  included  one  other 
British  officer  and  two  Americans. 

Colonel  Clark-Hall  was  the  head  of  the  second 
"air"  party,  which  had  charge  of  the  inspection 
of  seaplane  stations.  He  had  flown  in  a  seaplane 
in  the  first  year  of  the  war  at  Gallipoli,  and  more 
recently  had  directed  flying  operations  from  the 
Furious,  with  the  Grand  Fleet.  Having  sent  off 
the  aeroplanes  whose  bombs  had  practically  wiped 
out  the  Zeppelin  station  at  Tondern,  near  the 
Danish  border,  the  previous  summer,  he  had  an 
especial  interest  in  seeing  at  first  hand  the  effects 
of  that  raid,  though  otherwise  his  interest  was 
centred  in  seaplane  stations.  Two  American  fly- 
ing officers,  and  one  British,  completed  the  "sea- 
plane station"  party. 

The  Shipping  Board,  which  had  in  hand  the 
matter  of  the  return  to  England  of  the  two  score 
and  more  of  British  ships  in  German  harbours, 
was  headed  by  Commodore  George  P.  Bevan, 
E.N.,  the  Naval  Adviser  of  the  Minister  of  Ship- 


46  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ping,  who  had  distinguished  himself  earlier  in  the 
war  as  commander  of  the  British  trawler  patrol 
in  the  Mediterranean.  With  him  were  associated 
Commander  John  Leighton,  B.N.E.,  who  had 
achieved  notable  success  in  effecting  the  return  to 
England  of  the  numerous  British  merchant  ships 
in  Baltic  ports  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  and 
Mr.  Percy  Turner,  a  prominent  shipbuilder  and 
Secretary  to  the  Minister  of  Shipping.  The  ac- 
tual inspection  of  the  ships  in  German  harbours 
was  to  be  done  by  Commander  Leighton,  with  such 
assistance  as  was  needed  from  officers  of  the 
Hercules. 

It  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  senior  of  the  warship- 
searching  party  to  make  the  first  landing.  As 
this  party,  with  at  least  one  member  from  each 
nationality,  was  more  or  less  a  "  microcosm "  of 
the  Commission  itself,,  it  wais  decreed  that  it 
should  make  its  visits  in  state,  in  the  full  pomp 
and  panoply  of — peace.  This  meant,  one  sup- 
posed, frock  coats,  cocked  hats,  and  swords,  but 
as  all  the  former  had  been  sent  ashore,  by  order, 
early  in  the  war,  and  as  none  of  the  Americans 
had  even  the  latter,  it  was  evident  at  once  that 
there  was  no  use  competing  in  a  dress  parade  with 
the  Germans,  who  were  operating  at  their  own 
base,  so  to  speak.  The  best  that  could  be  done 
was  to  borrow  swords — from  any  of  the  ward- 


Getting  Down  to  Work  47 

room  officers  chancing  to  have  theirs  along — for 
the  Americans,  and  let  it  go  at  that.  The  "  Inter- 
national "  members,  whose  principal  duty,  in  con- 
nection with  the  searches,  was  to  walk  about  the 
upper  decks  and  look  dignified,  managed  to  wear 
their  swords  from  the  time  they  left  the  Hercules 
to  their  return ;  the  others,  who  had  really  to  look 
for  things,  and,  therefore,  to  clamber  up  and  down 
steel  ladders  of  boiler  rooms  and  the  " trunks"  of 
turrets,  after  numerous  annoying  trippings  up, 
had  finally  to  * '  stack  arms ' '  in  order  to  get  on  with 
their  search. 

Although  none  of  the  officers  of  the  Commission 
had  taken  part  in  the  search  of  the  German  ships 
interned  at  Scapa,  they  had  heard  enough  of  their 
filthiness  and  lack  of  discipline  to  be  prepared  to 
encounter  the  same  things  when  the  inspection  of 
the  ships  still  remaining  in  home  waters  was  un- 
dertaken. In  spite  of  this,  the  conditions — the 
dirtiness,  the  slothfulness,  the  apparent  utter  dis- 
regard of  the  men  for  such  few  of  their  officers 
as  still  remained — were  everywhere  much  worse 
than  had  been  anticipated.  This  may  well  be  ac- 
counted for  by  the  fact  that  the  surrendered  ships 
were  manned  entirely  by  volunteers,  and  these, 
naturally,  being  the  men  less  revolutionary  in 
spirit  and  more  amenable  to  discipline,  had  taken 
better  care  of  themselves  and  their  quarters  than 


48  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

those  who  remained  behind.  At  any  rate,  every 
one  of  the  ships  remaining  to  the  German  Navy 
was  an  offence  to  the  eye,  and  most  of  them  to  the 
nose  as  well.  If  it  was  true,  as  had  been  said,  that 
sloth  and  filth  are  the  high  hand-maidens  of  Bol- 
shevism, there  is  little  doubt  that  these  twin  trol- 
lops were  in  a  position  to  hand  the  dregs  of  the 
ex-Kaiser's  fleet  over  to  their  mistress  any  day 
she  wanted  it. 

We  had,  as  yet,  no  definite  hint  of  what  attitude 
the  men  of  the  Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Council 
were  going  to  take  toward  parties  landed  to  carry 
out  the  work  of  the  Allied  Commission,  and  that 
was  one  of  the  things  which  it  was  expected  this 
first  search  of  the  warships  in  the  Wilhelmshaven 
dockyard  would  reveal.  The  beginning  was  not 
auspicious,  for  in  the  very  first  ship  visited  the 
whole  of  the  remaining  crew  were  found  loitering 
indolently  about  the  decks,  in  direct  contravention 
of  the  clause  in  the  armistice  which  provided  that 
all  men  should  be  sent  ashore  during  the  visits  of 
Allied  searching  parties.  The  captain,  on  being 
appealed  to,  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  said  that 
he  was  quite  helpless.  "I  ordered  them  to  leave 
half  an  hour  ago,"  he  explained  to  the  inter- 
preter, "and  here  they  are  still.  I  have  no  au- 
thority over  them,  as  you  see ;  so  what  is  there  to 
do?  I  am  sorry,  but  you  see  the  position  I  am  in. 


Getting  Down  to  Work 


49 


I  trust  you  will  understand  how  humiliating  a  one 
it  is  for  an  officer  of  the  Imperial" — he  checked 
himself  at  the  word  Kaiserliche,  and  added  merely, 
" German  Navy." 

6  '  And,  believe  me,  it  was  humiliating, ' '  said  one 
of  the  American  officers  in  telling  of  the  incident 
later.  "I  had  to  keep  reminding  myself  that  the 
man  was  a  brother  officer  of  the  swine  that  sank 
the  Lusitania,  and  so  many  hospital  ships,  to  stop 
myself  from  telling  him  how  gol  darned  sorry  I 
was  for  any  one  that  had  got  let  in  for  a  mess  like 
that." 

The  situation  was  scarcely  less  embarrassing 
for  the  officer  at  the  head  of  the  Allied  party  than 
for  the  Germans.  Fortunately  the  Flag  Com- 
mander was  fully  equal  to  the  emergency.  "If 
these  men  are  not  out  on  the  dock  in  ten  minutes, ' ' 
he  said  to  the  captain, l  i  I  shall  have  no  alternative 
but  to  return  at  once  to  the  Hercules  and  report 
that  the  facilities  for  search  stipulated  in  the 
armistice  have  not  been  granted  me. ' '  Glancing 
at  his  wrist-watch,  he  sauntered  over  to  the  other 
side  of  the  deck. 

The  effect  of  the  words  (which  appeared  to  have 
been  understood  by  some  of  the  men  standing  near 
even  in  English)  was  galvanic.  Blue- jackets  were 
streaming  down  the  gangways  before  the  orders 
had  been  passed  on  to  them  by  their  officers,  and 


50  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

the  ship,  save  for  a  few  cooks  in  the  galley,  was 
emptied  well  within  the  time-limit  assigned.  It 
had  evidently  been  an  attempt  upon  the  part  of 
the  men  to  show  contempt  for  their  officers,  and 
was  not  intended  to  interfere  with  the  work  of  the 
searching  party.  Although  we  observed  countless 
instances  of  indiscipline  in  one  form  or  another, 
on  no  subsequent  occasion  did  it  appear  in  a  way 
calculated  to  annoy  or  delay  one  of  the  Allied  par- 
ties. On  the  contrary,  indeed,  the  men — and  espe- 
cially the  representatives  of  the  Workmen's  and 
Soldiers'  Council — were  almost  invariably  more 
than  willing  to  do  anything  to  help.  This  spirit, 
it  is  needless  to  say,  made  progress  much  faster 
and  easier,  and  a  continuance  of  it  boded  hope- 
fully for  the  completion  of  the  Commission's  pro- 
gram within  the  limit  of  the  original  period  of 
armistice. 

It  seems  to  have  been  the  strong — and,  I  have 
no  doubt,  entirely  sincere — desire  of  both  the  Ger- 
man naval  officers  and  the  members  of  the  Work- 
men's  and  Soldiers'  Council  to  get  the  inspection 
over  and  the  Allied  Commission  out  of  the  way 
that  led  to  a  co-operation  between  the  two  which 
I  can  hardly  conceive  as  existing  in  connection 
with  their  other  relations.  The  representatives 
of  the  Workmen  and  Soldiers  appeared  quite  rec- 
onciled to  the  ruling  of  the  Commission  that  the 


.     Getting  Down  to  Work  51 

latter  was  to  have  no  direct  dealings  with  them, 
and  they  exhibited  no  evidences  of  ill-feeling  over 
the  failure  of  their  attempts  to  establish  such  rela- 
tions. The  Naval  authorities  and  the  Council  had 
evidently  come  to  an  agreement  by  which  the  lat- 
ter were  to  be  allowed  to  have  a  representative — 
1 ' watching "  but  not  "talking" — with  every  Allied 
party  landing,  in  return  for  which  privilege  the 
Council  undertook  to  prevent  any  interference 
from  the  men  remaining  in  ships  or  air  stations 
visited.  Later,  when  journeys  by  railway  were 
undertaken,  and  a  guarantee  of  freedom  from 
molestation  by  the  civilian  population  was  re- 
quired, a  second  Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  repre- 
sentative— a  sort  of  a  "plain  clothes "  detective — 
was  added.  Both  white-banded  men  were  there 
to  help,  not  to  interfere.  Indeed,  the  men  seemed 
fully  to  realize  the  need  of  a  higher  mentality  than 
their  own  in  the  conduct  of  the  more  or  less  com- 
plicated negotiations  with  the  Allied  representa- 
tives, and  were  therefore  content  to  support  their 
officers  in  an  attempt  to  make  the  best  of  what  was 
a  sorry  situation  for  both. 

A  slight  hitch  which  occurred  in  the  arrange- 
ments of  the  "seaplane  station "  party  one  morn- 
ing, when  the  officer  who  was  to  have  accompanied 
it  failed  to  turn  up  on  the  landing  at  the  appointed 
hour,  showed  how  slender  was  the  thread  by  which 


52  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

the  authority  of  the  once  proud  and  domineering 
German  naval  officer  hung.  After  cooling  their 
heels  in  the  slush  of  the  dockyard  for  half  an  hour, 
the  party  returned  to  the  Hercules  to  await  an 
explanation.  This  came  an  hour  later,  when  the 
officer  in  question,  very  red  in  the  face,  came 
bumping  up  to  the  gangway  in  a  madly  driven  mo- 
tor-boat, and  clambered  up  to  the  quarter-deck  to 
make  his  apologies. 

"I  am  very  sorry, "  he  ejaculated  volubly,  "but 
it  was  not  understood  by  the  Arbeiten  und  Sol- 
datenrat  that  it  was  I  who  was  to  go  with  you  to- 
day. In  consequence,  the  permit  to  wear  my 
sword  and  epaulettes  and  other  markings  of  an 
officer  was  not  sent  to  me,  and  so  I  could  not  be 
allowed  to  travel  by  the  tramway  until  I  had  made 
known  the  trouble  by  telephone  and  had  the  per- 
mit sent.  It  was  even  very  difficult  for  me  to  be 
allowed  to  speak  over  the  telephone.  You  must 
see  how  very  hard  life  is  for  us  officers  as  things 
are  now." 

It  appears  that  even  the  officers  going  about 
with  the  Allied  naval  sub-commissions  were  only 
allowed  to  wear  their  designating  marks  for  the 
occasion,  and  that,  unless  a  special  permit  from 
the  Workmen 's  and  Soldiers'  Council  was  shown, 
these  had  to  be  removed  as  soon  as  they  went 
ashore.  The  constant  "self-pity"  which  the  offi- 


Getting  Down  to  Work 


53 


cers  kept  showing  in  the  matter  of  their  humili- 
ating predicament  was  the  one  thing  needed  to 
extinguish  the  sparks  of  sympathy  which  would 
keep  flaring  up  in  one's  breast  unless  one  stopped 
to  think  how  thoroughly  deserved — how  poetically 
just — it  all  was. 

With  one  or  two  exceptions,  all  the  best  of  Ger- 
many's capital  ships  were  known  to  have  been 
surrendered,  and  this  applied  to  light  cruisers  and 
destroyers  as  well.  The  U-boat  situation  was 
somewhat  obscure,  but  it  was  supposed — incor- 
rectly, as  transpired  later — that  a  fairly  clean 
sweep  of  the  best  of  the  under-water  craft  had 
also  been  made.  The  most  interesting  ships  which 
the  Allied  Commission  expected  to  see  in  German 
waters  were  the  battleship  Baden,  sister  of  the 
surrendered  Bayern,  and  the  battle-cruiser  Mack- 
ensen,  sister  of  the  surrendered  Hindenburg. 
The  Regensburg  and  Konigsberg,  which  had  been 
left  to  the  Germans  to  "get  about  in,"  were  also 
considered  worthy  of  study  at  close  range  as  ex- 
amples of  the  latest  type  of  German  light  cruiser. 
The  Mackensen,  still  far  from  completed,  was  in  a 
yard  on  the  Elbe  at  Hamburg.  The  others  were 
inspected  at  Wilhelmshaven. 

I  think  I  am  speaking  conservatively  when  I 
say  that  all  of  the  Allied  officers  who  saw  them 
from  the  inside  were  distinctly  disappointed  in 


54  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

even  these  most  modern  examples  of  German  na- 
val construction.  After  the  extremely  good  fight 
that  practically  every  one  of  them — from  the  Em- 
den  and  Konigsberg  and  the  ships  of  Von  Speeds 
squadron  at  the  Falklands  to  the  battle-cruisers 
of  Von  Hipper  at  Jutland — had  put  up  when  it 
was  once  drawn  into  action,  it  was  only  natural 
to  expect  that  some  radical  departures  in  con- 
struction, armament,  and  gunnery  control  would 
be  revealed  on  closer  acquaintance.  This  did  not 
prove  to  be  the  case,  though  it  is  only  fair  to  say 
that,  in  the  matter  of  gunnery  control,  there  was 
little  opportunity  to  pass  judgment,  owing  to  the 
fact  that,  in  every  instance,  the  Germans — as  they 
had  a  perfect  right  to  do — had  removed  all  the  in- 
struments and  gear  calculated  to  give  any  indica- 
tion of  the  character  of  the  installation. 

The  German  ships  were  found  to  be  extremely 
well  built,  especially  in  the  solidity  of  construction 
of  their  hulls,  the  fact  that  they  were  not  intended 
to  be  lived  in  by  a  full  ship 's  company  all  of  the 
time  making  it  easy  to  multiply  bulkheads  and  dis- 
pense with  doors.  But  there  was  nothing  new  in 
this  fact  to  those  who  knew  the  amount  of  ham- 
mering the  Seydlitz  and  Derfflinger  had  survived 
at  Dogger  Bank  and  Jutland.  Even  so,  however, 
there  was  nothing  to  indicate  that  these  latest  of 
German  ships  would  stand  more  punishment  than 


Getting  Down  to  Work 


55 


any  unit  of  the  Grand  Fleet  after  the  stiffening 
all  British  capital  ships  received  as  a  consequence 
of  what  was  learned  at  Jutland. 

In  several  respects  it  was  evident  that  the  Ger- 
mans had  merely  become  tardy  converts  to  Brit- 
ish practice.  The  tripod  mast,  which  dates  back 
something  like  a  decade  in  British  capital  ships, 
and  which  has,  since  the  war,  been  built  in  light 
cruisers  and  even  destroyer  leaders,  was  only 
adopted  by  the  Germans  with  the  laying  down  of 
the  Bayern  and  Hindenburg.  Similarly,  the 
armament — both  main  and  secondary — of  the  re- 
spective classes  of  battleship  and  battle-cruiser 
to  which  these  two  ships  give  the  name,  is  a  frank 
admission  on  the  part  of  the  Germans  that  the 
British  were  five  years  ahead  of  them  in  the  mat- 
ter of  guns. 

Gunnery  control,  the  one  thing  above  all  others 
which  the  British  Navy  was  interested  in  when  it 
came  to  an  intimate  study  of  the  German  ships,  is, 
unfortunately,  one  of  the  things  upon  which  the 
least  light  has  been  shed.  The  German,  since  he 
had  to  disarm,  did  the  job  with  characteristic  Teu- 
tonic thoroughness.  The  transmitting  stations  in 
all  of  the  modern  ships — the  one  point  where  there 
would  have  been  a  great  concentration  of  special 
instruments  of  control — looked  like  unfurnished 
rooms  in  their  emptiness.  So,  too,  the  foretops 


56  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

and  what  must  have  heen  the  director  towers. 
One  moot  point  may,  however,  be  regarded  as  set- 
tled. There  have  been  many  who  maintained  that, 
since  the  German  fire  was  almost  invariably  ex- 
tremely accurate  in  the  opening  stages  of  an  ac- 
tion, and  tended  to  fall  off  rapidly  after  the  ship 
came  under  fire  herself,  the  enemy  gunnery  con- 
trol involved  the  use  of  a  very  elaborate  and 
highly  complicated  installation  of  special  instru- 
ments, many  of  which  were  too  delicate  to  stand 
the  stress  of  continued  action.  The  British  and 
American  officers  who  went  over  the  latest  of  the 
enemy 's  ships,  however,  are  agreed  that  all  the 
evidence  available  points  to  this  not  being  the 
case — that  the  German  gunnery  control,  on  the 
contrary,  was  undoubtedly  as  simple  as  it  was 
efficient,  and  that  the  fact  that  it  had  not  stood  up 
well  in  action  was  probably  more  due  to  human 
than  mechanical  failure. 

It  is  considered  as  by  no  means  improbable  that 
the  good  shooting  of  the  German  ships  was  largely 
traceable  to  the  excellence  of  their  range-finders 
and  the  special  training  of  those  who  used  them. 
Whether  it  is  true  or  not  that  France  and  Eng- 
land have  succeeded  since  the  war  in  making  opti- 
cal glass  equal  to  that  of  Jena,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  latter  was  superior  in  the  first  years  of 
the  war.  The  German  ships  unquestionably  had 


Getting  Down  to  Work 


57 


more  accurate  range-finders  than  did  the  British, 
and  it  is  also  known  now  that  the  Germans  took 
great  care  in  .testing  the  eyesight  of  the  men  em- 
ployed to  handle  these  instruments,  and  that  much 
attention  was  given  to  their  training.  It  is  be- 
lieved that  upon  these  simple  points  alone,  rather 
than  upon  the  use  of  a  highly  complicated  system 
of  control,  the  admitted  excellence  of  German  gun- 
nery was  based.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  they  had  anything  better  than  the  British  for 
laying  down  the  "rate  of  change/'  and  keeping 
the  enemy  under  fire  once  he  had  been  straddled. 
Although  it  was  known  to  the  British  sailor  in 
a  general  sort  of  way  that  the  Germans  only  spent 
a  comparatively  small  part  of  their  time  aboard 
their  ships,  the  tangible  evidence  of  this  remark- 
able state  of  affairs — in  the  vast  blocks  of  bar- 
racks at  Wilhelmshaven  and  the  very  crude,  in- 
adequate living  quarters  in  even  the  most  modern 
of  the  ships  searched — gave  him  only  less  of  a 
shock,  and  aroused  in  him  only  less  contempt,  than 
did  the  filth  and  indiscipline  of  the  German  sailors. 
The  German  officer  who  assured  one  of  the  search- 
ing parties  that  their  ships  were  made  "to  fight 
in,  not  to  live  in, ' '  told  the  literal  truth,  and  it  only 
accentuates  the  bitter  irony  of  the  fact  that,  when 
finally  they  refused  to  fight,  they  had  to  begin  to 
be  lived  in  willy-nilly. 


58  .         To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

"You  can't  tell  me  there  isn't  a  God  in  Israel, 
now  that  we've  got  the  Huns  at  Scapa  living  in 
their  own  ships, "  said  an  officer  on  coming  off  to 
the  Hercules  one  night  after  his  first  day  spent  in 
going  over  some  of  the  remnants  of  the  German 
Navy  at  Wilhelmshaven.  That  same  thought  is 
awakening  no  end  of  comfort  in  the  breast  of  many 
a  British  naval  officer  this  winter,  who  would  oth- 
erwise have  been  down  on  his  luck  for  having  still 
to  stand  to  his  guns  after  the  war  was  over.  In 
a  previous  chapter  I  have  told  how  we  intercepted 
a  wireless  from  Admiral  Von  Eeuter,  saying  that 
he  had  "gone  sick"  at  Scapa  and  asking  to  be 
relieved.  That  was  not  the  last  by  any  means 
that  we  were  to  hear  of  the  "hardships"  of  life 
in  those  German  "fighting  ships"  at  good  old 
Scapa,  The  veritable  howls  of  protest  rising 
from  the  Orkneys  were  echoing  in  Wilhelmshaven 
and  Kiel  during  all  the  time  the  Commission  spent 
in  German  waters.  Some  mention  of  the  "sad 
plight"  of  the  German  sailors  there  was  made  at 
every  conference,  and  it  was  at  the  final  one,  I  be- 
lieve, that  Admiral  Goette  said  that  the  "cruel 
conditions"  under  which  the  men  in  the  interned 
ships  were  being  compelled  to  live  at  Scapa  Flow 
was  alone  responsible  for  the  fact  that  it  had 
been  so  far  impossible  to  find  a  crew  to  man  the 
Baden,  which  he  had  agreed  some  days  previously 


Getting  Down  to  Work  59 

should  be  delivered  in  place  of  the  uncompleted 
MacJcensen. 

Except  for  the  several  modern  ships  I  have 
mentioned,  the  search  of  the  naval  units  remain- 
ing in  German  ports  resolved  itself  into  a  more 
or  less  monotonous  clambering  over  a  lot  of  ob- 
solete hulks — from  many  of  which  even  the  guns 
had  been  removed — to  see  that  no  munitions  re- 
mained in  their  magazines.  There  was  always  the 
same  inevitable  filth  to  be  waded  through,  always 
the  same  gloweringly  sullen — or,  worse  still  by 
way  of  variation,  cringingly  obsequious — officers 
to  be  endured.  The  sullen  ones  usually  improved 
when  they  found  that  no  ' '  indignities ' '  were  to  be 
heaped  upon  them,  and  that  they  had  only  to  an- 
swer a  few  questions  and  show  the  way  round; 
but  you  had  to  keep  a  weather  eye  lifting  for  the 
obsequious  ones  to  prevent  their  helping  you  up 
ladders  by  steadying  your  elbow,  rubbing  imag- 
inary spots  of  grease  off  your  monkey  jacket,  and 
—the  invariable  finale — offering  you  a  limp,  moist 
hand  to  shake  at  parting.  The  latter,  like  the 
ruthless  U-boat  warfare,  was  dangerous  princi- 
pally on  account  of  its  unexpectedness.  When 
adequate  "  counter  measures "  were  devised 
against  it,  it  became  less  threatening,  but  had 
always  to  be  looked  out  for.  I  don't  recall, 
though,  hearing  any  one  confess  to  having  been 


60  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

"surprised"  into  shaking  hands  after  the  first 
day  or  two. 

The  search  of  the  warships  at  Wilhelm shaven 
was  finished  in  a  couple  of  days,  while  the  few  old 
cruisers  and  destroyers  at  Emden  were  inspected 
in  the  three  hours  between  going  and  returning 
railway  journeys,  taking  about  the  same  length  of 
time.  At  Hamburg  and  Bremen  there  were  prin- 
cipally merchant  ships  and  U-boats,  and  the  search 
of — and  for — both  of  these  is  a  story  of  its  own. 
The  remainder  of  the  work  on  the  North  Sea  side 
consisted  in  journeys — by  train,  motor,  destroyer, 
or  launch — to,  and  the  inspection  of,  Germany's 
principal  seaplane  and  airship  stations,  and  of 
these  highly  interesting  visits  I  shall  write  in  later 
chapters. 


HI 


FIRST    IMPRESSIONS    OF    "  STARVING    GERMANY 


OUR  visit  to  the  island  of  Norderney  was  a  me- 
morable one  for  two  reasons — first,  because  we 
inspected  there  what  is  not  only  the  largest  of 
Germany's  seaplane  stations,  but  also  probably 
the  largest  and  best  equipped  in  all  Europe ;  and 
second,  because  the  journey  there  gave  us,  all  in 
the  course  of  a  few  hours,  our  first  after-the-war 
glimpse  of  a  German  city,  German  countryside,  a 
German  railway,  and  what  had  once  been  a  Ger- 
man summer  resort.  The  couple  of  days  spent 
in  the  search  of  the  German  warships  had  given 
no  opportunity  whatever  to  see  anything  more 
than  an  interminable  succession  of  dirty  mess 
decks,  empty  magazines,  disgruntled  officers,  slo- 
venly sailors,  and  cluttered  docks.  Steeples  and 
factory  chimneys  and  the  loom  of  lofty  barracks 
located  Wilhelmshaven  without  revealing  it.  The 
steady  dribble  of  pedestrians  along  the  water- 
front road  might  have  been  made  up  of  Esquimaux 
or  Kanakas,  for  all  that  we  could  see.  One  won- 
dered if  their  emaciated  frames  were  dressed  in 
paper  suits,  and  if  their  tottering  feet  clumped 
along  in  wooden  clogs.  The  excellence  of  the  ma- 

61 


62  To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

terial  of  the  untidy  garb  of  the  sailors,  and  the 
well-fed  appearance  of  the  latter,  seemed  to  point 
to  the  contrary.  But  still  one  couldn't  be  sure. 
We  knew  that  Germany  had  never  made  the  mis- 
take of  under-feeding  or  under-clothing  her  sol- 
diers and  sailors,  and  that  where  any  one  had  to  go 
without  it  was  always  the  civilians  who  suffered. 
We  wanted  to  see  how  those  civilians  had  stood 
the  ' i  starvation  blockade ' '  against  which  they  had 
protested  so  loudly,  and  now — through  our  visits 
to  the  various  naval  air  stations — the  veil  was 
about  to  be  lifted. 

The  fog — the  interminable  fog  which  never 
lifted  for  more  than  a  few  hours  at  a  time  during 
the  whole  of  our  three  weeks  in  German  waters- 
banked  thick  above  the  green  stream  of  the  swift- 
running  tide  as  our  picket  boat  shoved  off  from 
the  Hercules  at  eight  o'clock  that  morning,  and 
there  was  just  sufficient  visibility  to  pick  up  the 
successive  buoys  marking  the  course  to  the  en- 
trance to  the  basin.  Eunning  in  just  ahead  of  an 
antique  torpedo-boat  with  the  usual  indolent  sail- 
ors slouching  along  its  narrow  decks,  we  stepped 
out  upon  the  longest  pontoon  landing  I  have  ever 
seen.  Twenty  yards  wide,  and  over  a  hundred  in 
length,  it  was  constructed  so  as  to  rise  and  fall 
with  flow  and  ebb  of  what  must  have  been  a  very 
considerable  tide. 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     63 

No  one  being  on  the  landing  to  receive  the 
party,  we  started  walking  in  toward  its  shore- 
ward end.  The  men  on  the  torpedo-boats  stared 
at  us  with  insolent  curiosity,  without  the  sugges- 
tion of  the  shuffle  of  a  foot  toward  standing  at 
attention  as  even  the  "brassiest"  of  our  several 
"brass-hats"  passed  by;  but  from  the  galley  of  a 
tug  moored  on  the  opposite  side  the  cook  grinned 
wide-mouthed  welcome.  She  was  a  fine,  upstand- 
ing, double-braided  blonde  of  generous  propor- 
tions, and  the  bulging  bulk  of  her  overflowed  the 
narrow  companion-way  into  which  she  was  wedged 
as  the  raw  red  flesh  of  her  arm  swelled  over  the 
line  of  its  rolled-up  sleeve. 

"No  traces  of  under-feeding  in  that  figure," 
said  a  British  flying  officer,  with  the  critically  im- 
personal glance  he  would  have  given  to  the  wings 
of  a  machine  he  was  about  to  take  the  air  in. 
"No/'  acquiesced  one  of  the  Americans;  "and 
there's  no  fear  of  schrecMicJikeit  in  that  face, 
either.  Pipe  that  'welcome-to-our-f air-city'  grin, 
won't  you.  Could  you  beat  it  for  a  display  of 
ivories?" 

And  so  we  came  to  "starving  Germany." 

A  bustling  young  flying  lieutenant  came  hurry- 
ing to  meet  us  at  the  shore  end  of  the  landing, 
apologizing  for  his  tardiness  by  saying  that  it  was 
due  to  ' '  trouble  about  the  cars. ' '  After  seeing  the 


64  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

motley  collection  of  motors  which  awaited  us  out- 
side the  gate,  one  had  no  difficulty  in  believing 
him;  indeed,  it  was  hard  to  see  how  there  could 
be  anything  but  " trouble  about  the  cars."  The 
best  of  them  was  an  ancient  Mercedes,  the  pneu- 
matic tyres  of  which,  worn  down  to  the  treads, 
looked  as  though  they  would  puncture  on  the 
smooth  face  of  a  paving  stone.  Two  others — one 
of  them  looked  like  a  sort  of  "  perpetuation "  of  a 
collision  between  a  Daimler  lorry  and  a  Benz 
runabout,  and  the  other  was  an  out-and-out  mon- 
grel with  no  visible  marks  of  ancestry — had  the 
remains  of  what  had  once  been  solid  tyres  of  ersatz 
rubber  bound  to  the  rims  with  bits  of  tarred  rope. 
The  fourth  and  last  was  ersatz  throughout.  That 
is  to  say,  it  seemed  to  be  made — from  its  paper 
upholstery  to  its  steel-spring-  tyres — of  "other 
things"  than  those  from  which  the  normal  cars 
one  has  always  known  are  made  of. 

I  had  heard  much  of  those  spring  tyres,  so, 
taking  advantage  of  the  general  rush  for  the  pneu- 
matically tyred  Mercedes  and  the  ' l  rheumatically ' ' 
tyred  nondescripts,  I  lifted  an  oiled-paper  curtain 
and  plumped  down  on  the  woven  paper  cushion  of 
old  "Ersatz."  As  the  other  cars  were  quite  filled 
up  with  the  remainder  of  our  party,  the  escorting 
German  officer  came  in  with  me. 

"The  imitation  rubber,"  he  began  slowly  and 


Impressions  of  " Starving  Germany"     65 

precisely,  "  makes  many  good  things,  but  not  the 
good  motor  tyres.  It  is  resilient,  but  not  elastic. 
It  will  stand  the  pushing  but  not  the  pulling.  It 
is  not  strong,  not  tough,  like  the  rubber  from  the 
tree.  Ah,  the  English  were  very  lucky  always 
to  have  the  real  rubber.  If  that  had  been  so  with 
Germany — " 

Just  to  what  extent  a  continuous  supply  of  real 
rubber  would  have  modified  the  situation  for  Ger- 
many I  did  not  learn,  for  we  started  up  just  then, 
and  the  rest  of  the  sentence  was  lost  in  the  mighty 
whirl  of  sound  in  which  we  were  engulfed.  The 
best  comparison  I  can  make  of  the  noise  that  car 
made — as  heard  from  within— is  to  a  sustained 
crescendo  of  a  super-Jazz  band,  the  cymbals  of 
which  were  represented  by  the  clankity-clank  of 
the  component  parts  of  the  steel  tyres  banging 
against  each  other  and  the  pavement,  and  the 
drums  of  which  were  the  rhythmic  thud-thud  of 
the  ersatz  body  on  the  lifeless  springs.  Although 
the  other  cars  were  rattling  heavily  on  their  own 
account,  the  ear-rending  racket  of  the  steel-tyres 
dominated  the  situation  completely,  and  at  the 
first  turn  I  caught  an  impressionistic  blend  of  blue 
and  khaki  uniforms  as  their  occupants  leaned  out 
to  see  what  was  in  pursuit  of  them. 

"It  was  unlike  any  sound  I  ever  heard  before," 
said  one  of  them  in  describing  it  later.  "It  was 


66  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

positively  Bolshevik  I"  All  in  all,  I  think  " Bol- 
shevik "  is  more  fittingly  descriptive  than  "  Jazz- 
band-ic."  It  carries  a  suggestion  of  "savage- 
ness"  quite  lacking  in  the  latter,  and  "savage" 
that  raucous  tornado  of  sound  surely  was.  I 
could  never  allow  myself  to  contemplate  the  pri- 
mal chaos  one  of  the  American  officers  tried  to 
conjure  up  by  asking  what  it  would  be  like  to 
hear  two  motor  convoys  of  steel-tyred  trucks  pass- 
ing each  other  during  a  bombardment.  The  only 
sensible  comment  I  heard  on  that  question  was 
from  the  officer  who  cut  in  with,  "Please  tell  me 
how  you'd  know  there  was  a  bombardment?" 

There  was  one  thing  that  steel-tyred  car  did 
well,  though,  and  that  was  to  respond  to  its  emer- 
gency brake.  The  occasion  for  the  use  of  the  lat- 
ter arose  when  a  turning  bridge  was  suddenly 
opened  fifteen  or  twenty  yards  ahead  of  the  lead- 
ing car,  imposing  upon  the  latter  the  necessity  of 
stopping  dead  inside  that  distance  or  taking  a 
header  into  a  canal.  The  Mercedes,  skating  airily 
along  on  its  wobbly  tyres,  managed  it  by  inches 
«after  streaking  the  pavement  with  two  broad  belts 
of  the  last  "real  tree  rubber"  left  in  Germany. 
The  leading  nondescript — the  Benz-Daimler  blend 
— gave  the  Mercedes  a  sharp  bump  before  losing 
the  last  of  its  momentum,  and  all  but  the  last  of 
its  fluttering  "rope-ersafe-rubber"  tyres,  while 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     67 

its  mate  only  came  to  a  standstill  after  skidding 
sideways  on  its  rims.  But  my  steel-tyred  chariot, 
the  instant  its  emergency  brake  was  thrown  on, 
simply  set  its  teeth  into  the  red  brick  pavement, 
and,  spitting  sparks  like  a  dragon,  stopped  as  dead 
as  though  it  had  run  against  a  stone  wall.  My 
companion  and  I,  having  nothing  to  set  our  teeth 
into,  simply  kept  going  right  on.  I,  luckily,  only 
butted  the  chauffeur,  who — evidently  because  the 
same  thing  had  happened  to  him  before — took  it 
all  in  good  part ;  but  the  dapper  young  officer,  who 
planted  the  back  of  his  head  squarely  between 
the  shoulder  blades  of  the  august  Workmen's  and 
Soldiers'  representative  riding  beside  the  driver, 
got  a  good  swearing  at  for  not  aiming  lower  and 
allowing  the  back  of  the  seat  to  absorb  his  inertia. 
Quite  apart  from  the  sparks  kicked  up  by  the  tyres, 
and  the  stars  shaken  down  by  my  jolt,  it  was  a 
highly  illuminating  little  incident. 

We  ran  more  slowly  after  we  crossed  the  bridge 
—which  also  meant  more  quietly,  or  rather,  less 
noisily — and  for  the  first  time  I  noticed  what  a 
new  world  we  seemed  to  have  come  into  since  we 
left  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  docks.  It  was 
not  so  much  that  we  were  now  passing  down  a 
street  of  small  shops,  where  before  we  had  been 
among  warehouses  and  factories,  as  the  difference 
in  appearance  and  spirit  of  the  people.  No  one — 


68  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

not  even  the  labourer  going  to  his  morning  work — 
had  anything  of  the  slovenly  hang-dog  air  of  the 
sailors  we  had  seen  in  the  ships  and  about  the 
dockyard.  The  streets  and  the  shops  were  clean, 
and  even  the  meanest  of  the  people  neatly  and 
comfortably  dressed.  We  had  come  out  of  the 
atmosphere  of  revolution  into  that  of  ordinary 
work-a-day  Germany. 

As  we  rounded  a  corner  and  came  clattering 
into  the  main  street  of  the  city,  the  change  was 
even  more  marked.  At  first  blush  there  was 
hardly  a  suggestion  of  war,  or  of  war 's  aftermath. 
The  big  shop-windows  were  full  of  goods,  with 
here  and  there  the  forerunning  red-and-green 
decorations  of  the  coming  holidays.  Here  was  an 
art  shop 's  display  of  etchings  and  coloured  prints, 
there  a  haberdasher's  stock  of  scarves  and  shirts 
and  gloves.  Even  a  passing  glance,  it  is  true,  re- 
vealed a  prominently  displayed  line  of  false  shirt 
fronts;  but,  then,  your  German  always  was  par- 
tial to  "dickeys."  A  florist's  window,  in  which  a 
fountain  plashed  above  a  basin  of  water-lilies,  was 
golden  with  splendid  chrysanthemums,  and  in  the 
milliner's  window  hard  by  a  saffron-plumed  con- 
fection of  ultra-marine  held  high  revel  with  a 
riotous  thing  of  royal  purple  plush. 

Noting  my  eager  interest  in  the  gay  window 
panorama,  my  companion,  leaning  close  to  my 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     69 

ear  to  make  himself  heard  above  the  clatter  of  the 
tyres,  shouted  jerkily  with  the  jolt  of  the  car, 

We  are  fond  of  the  bright  colours,  we  Germans, 
and  we  piake  the  very  good  dyes.  I  think  you 
have  missed  very  much  the  German  dyes  since  the 
war,  and  will  now  be  very  glad  of  the  chance  to 
have  them  again.  We  have  learned  much  during 
the  war,  and  they  are  now  better  than  ever  before. 
We  laugh  very  much  when  we  capture  the  French 
soldier  with  the  faded  blue  uniform,  for  then  we 
know  that  the  French  cannot  make  the  dye  that 
will  hold  its  colour.  But  the  German — " 

"Waiting  with  the  goods, "  I  said  to  myself  as 
I  drew  away  from  the  dissertation  to  watch  a 
tramcar  disgorging  its  load  at  a  crossing. 

We  were  now  running  through  the  heart  of 
Wilhelmshaven,  and  it  was  the  early  office  crowd 
that  was  thronging  the  streets.  How  well  they 
were  dressed,  and  how  well  fed  they  looked! 
There  were  no  hollow  eyes  or  emaciated  forms  in 
that  crowd.  One  who  has  seen  famines  in  China 
and  India  knows  the  hunger  look,  the  hunger  pal- 
lor, the  hunger  apathy.  There  is  no  mistaking 
them.  But  we  had  not  seen  any  of  them  in  the 
German  ships  or  dockyards,  we  did  not  see  them 
that  day  in  Wilhelmshaven,  and  we  were  not  des- 
tined to  see  them  in  Bremen,  Hamburg,  Kiel,  or 
anywhere  else  we  went  in  the  course  of  our  many 


70  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

hundreds  of  miles  of  travel  in  Northern  Germany. 
So  far  as  Mecklenburg,  Oldenburg,  and  Schleswig- 
Holstein  were  concerned,  I  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  the  starvation  whine,  which  arose  from 
the  moment  the  ink  was  dry  upon  the  armistice 
agreement  and  which  still  persists,  was  sheer- 
to  be  charitable,  let  us  say — panic. 

Presently,  as  we  began  to  pass  some  huge 
masses  of  buildings  which,  four  or  five  stories  in 
height,  appeared  to  run  on  through  two  or  three 
blocks  of  the  not  unattractive  park-like  grounds 
with  which  they  were  surrounded,  my  companion, 
indicating  them  with  a  proud  wave  of  his  hand, 
started  speaking  again.  I  could  not  hear  him 
distinctly — for  we  were  speeding  up  faster  now, 
and  consequently  making  more  noise — but  I 
thought  I  caught  the  drift  of  what  he  was  trying 
to  say. 

"Ja,  ja,"  I  roared  back.  "Ich  verstehe  sehr 
gut.  Der  naval  barracks.  Der  German  High  Sea 
Fleet  Base."  I  think  that  was  hardly  the  way  he 
was  trying  to  put  it,  but  his  vigorous  nod  of  assent 
showed  that  I  had  at  least  gathered  the  sense  of 
his  observations.  As  we  slowed  down  at  the  next 
corner  he  put  me  completely  right  by  saying,  "Not 
for  the  ships  themselves,  the  big  barracks,  but  for 
the  men  when  the  ships  were  here.  I  think  you 
make  a  joke."  I  admitted  the  shrewd  impeach- 


Impressions  of  " Starving  Germany"     71 

ment  with  a  grin,  but  hardly  thought  it  necessary 
to  add  that  I  was  afraid  he  had  still  missed  the 
best  part  of  the  joke.  He  was  a  diverting  lad,  that 
young  flying  officer,  and  he  told  me  many  interest- 
ing things  in  the  course  of  the  day.  Some  of  them 
were  true,  as  subsequent  events  or  observations 
proved ;  but  one  of  them  at  least  was  a  calculated 
and  deliberate  lie,  told  with  the  purpose  of  in- 
ducing one  of  the  "air"  parties  to  give  up  the 
plan  it  had  formed  of  visiting  a  certain  station. 
I  will  set  down  that  significant  little  incident  in  its 
proper  place. 

Although,  as  we  learned  later,  the  fact  that  a 
party  from  the  Allied  Commission  was  to  land  and 
pass  through  the  city  that  day  had  been  carefully 
withheld  from  the  people,  the  latter  exhibited  very 
little  surprise  at  the  appearance  of  officers  in  uni- 
forms which  they  seemed  to  recognize  at  once  as 
foreign.  They  had  been  instructed  that  they  were 
to  make  no  demonstration  of  any  kind  when  Allied 
officers  were  encountered  in  the  streets,  and,  do- 
cile as  ever,  they  carried  out  the  order  to  the 
letter.  A  mild,  unresentful  curiosity  would  per- 
haps best  describe  the  attitude  of  all  the  people 
who  saw  us  that  day,  both  in  Wilhelmshaven  and 
at  the  country  stations. 

The  fact  that  many  of  the  streets  were  dressed 
with  flags  and  greenery,  and  that  all  of  the  chil- 


72  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

dren,  both  boys  and  girls,  trudging  along  to  school 
carried  the  red,  white,  and  black  emblem  in  their 
hands,  suggested  to  me  at  first  that  it  was  part  of 
a  patriotic  display,  a  sort  of  flaunting  the  new- 
found freedom  in  the  face  of  the  "  invader. "  But 
my  companion  assured  me  that  the  decorations 
were  in  honour  of  the  expected  arrival  home  of 
two  regiments  of  Wilhelmshaven  Marines  from 
the  Front.  "We  have  been  en  fete  for  a  week 
now  in  hourly  expectation  of  their  coming,  and 
every  day  the  children  have  put  on  their  best 
clothes  and  carried  flags  in  their  hands.  But  the 
railway  service  is  very  bad,  and  always  are  they 
disappointed.  You  will  see  the  arch  of  welcome 
at  the  railway  station.  Wilhelmshaven  is  very 
proud  of  its  Marine  soldiers. " 

The  "arch"  at  the  station  turned  out  to  be  the 
evergreen  and  bunting-decorated  entrance  to  a 
long  shed  set  with  tables,  at  which  refreshments 
were  to  be  served  to  the  returning  warriors.  It 
was  surmounted  with  a  shield  bearing  the  words 
"Willkommen  Soldaten,"  and  an  eight-line  stanza 
of  verse  which  I  did  not  have  time  to  copy.  The 
gist  of  it  was  that  the  soldiers  were  welcomed 
home  to  "Work  and  Liberty. ' '  It  was  thoroughly 
bad  verse,  said  one  of  our  interpreters,  but  the 
sentiments  were — for  Germany — "restrained  and 
dignified. "  There  was  nothing  about  the  "un- 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     73 

beaten  soldiers, ' '  of  whom  we  had  been  reading  as 
welcomed  home  in  Berlin  and  other  parts  of  Ger- 
many. 

There  was  a  small  crowd  at  the  station  entrance 
as  our  cars  drove  up,  but  it  parted  quietly  and 
made  way  for  us  to  pass  inside.  One  or  two 
sailors  stood  at  attention  and  saluted — though 
whether  German  or  Allied  officers  it  was  impossi- 
ble to  tell — and  several  civilians  bowed  solemnly 
and  took  off  their  hats.  One  of  these  reached  out 
and  made  temporary  captive  an  irreverent  street 
gamin  who — purely  in  a  spirit  of  fun,  apparently 
—started  "goose-stepping"  along  in  our  wake. 
A  bevy  of  minxes  of  the  shop-girl  type  giggled 
sputteringly,  getting  much  apparent  amusement 
the  while  out  of  pretending  to  keep  each  other 
quiet.  One  gaudily  garbed  pair,  standing  easily 
at  gaze  in  the  middle  of  the  waiting-room,  stared 
brazenly  and  ogled  frank  invitation.  An  austere 
dame — she  might  have  been  an  opulent  naval  cap- 
tain's frau — drew  a  languid  hand  from  what 
looked  like  a  real  ermine  muff  to  lift  a  tortoise- 
shell  lorgnette  and  pass  us  one  by  one  in  critical 
review.  Then  the  old  ticket-puncher,  touching  his 
cap  as  though  he  had  recognized  the  party  as  the 
Board  of  Directors  on  a  surreptitious  tour  of  in- 
spection, passed  us  through  the  gate  and  on  the 
platform  and  our  waiting  train. 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

Our  special  consisted  of  a  luggage  van  and  a 
passenger  coach,  drawn  by  an  engine  in  a  very 
advanced  state  of  what  appeared  to  be  neglect. 
Though  all  its  parts  were  there,  these,  except 
where  rubbed  clean  by  friction,  were  thick  with 
rust  and  scaled  with  flaking  paint.  The  worst 
trouble,  however,  seemed  to  come  from  lack  of 
lubrication,  for  in  the  places  where  every  other 
locomotive  I  had  seen  before  was  dripping  with 
oil,  this  one  showed  only  caked  graphite  and  hard, 
dry  steel.  While  there  is  little  doubt  that  the 
Germans  made  a  point  of  turning  out  their  worst 
engines  and  motor  cars  for  the  use  of  the  Allied 
sub-commissions  in  order  to  give  an  impression 
that  things  were  really  in  a  desperate  way  with 
them,  it  is  still  beyond  question  that  their  railway 
stock  deteriorated  greatly  during  the  war,  and 
that  a  shortage  of  lubricating  oils  was  one  of 
their  very  worst  difficulties. 

The  passenger  coach  was  equally  divided  be- 
tween first-  and  second-class  compartments.  En- 
tering at  the  second-class  end,  our  party  distrib- 
uted itself  between  the  first  two  compartments 
reached.  By  the  time  one  of  the  several  German 
officers  who  had  now  joined  us  pointed  out  the 
big  figure  "2"  on  the  windows,  we  were  so  com- 
fortably settled  that  no  one  deemed  it  worth 
while  to  move.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  on  the  Ger- 


Impressions  of  " Starving  Germany"     75 

man  railways,  with  their  four  or  five  classes, 
there  is  gentler  gradation  between  class  and  class 
than  in  France  or  England ;  and  between  first  and 
second — save  that  the  former  is  upholstered  in 
dark-red  plush  and  the  latter  in  light-green — the 
difference  is  hardly  noticeable.  The  main  dif- 
ference is,  I  believe,  in  the  price,,  and  the  fact  that 
only  six  are  allowed  in  the  first-class  against  eight 
in  the  second.  We  extracted  a  good  deal  of 
amusement  out  of  the  fact  that  the  several  Work- 
men's and  Soldiers'  representatives  made  no  mis- 
take, and  lost  no  time,  in  marking  a  first-class  com- 
partment for  their  own. 

We  had  been  somewhat  perplexed  on  our  ar- 
rival at  the  station  to  note  that  the  two  uniformed 
Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  representatives  had 
been  joined  by  two  civilians,  each  wearing  the 
white  arm-band  of  the  revolutionary  council.  But 
presently  one  of  the  latter,  hat  in  hand,  came  to 
the  door  of  our  compartment  to  explain.  The 
naval  authorities,  he  said,  had  requested  that  the 
Workmen  and  Soldiers  should  guarantee  the 
safety  of  all  Allied  parties  landing  from  civilian 
attack,  and  in  consequence  he  had  been  sent  along 
as  a  "hostage."  At  least  the  German  term  he 
used  was  one  which  could  be  translated  as  host- 
age, but  after  talking  it  over  we  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  man 's  role  was  more  analogous  to 


76  To  Kiel  in  the  "Hercules" 

that  of  a  "  plain  clothes "  special  policeman. 
There  was  one  of  these  men  attached  to  every 
party  that  made  a  train  journey  on  the  North  Sea 
side  (all  stations  in  the  Baltic  littoral  were  reached 
by  destroyer,  so  that  no  "  protection "  from  the 
civilian  population  was  necessary),  and  they  were 
neither  of  any  trouble  nor — so  far  as  I  was  ever 
able  to  discern — any  use. 

Leaving  a  handful  of  morning  papers  behind 
him  as  a  propitiatory  offering,  our  "hostage" 
bowed  himself  out  of  the  door  and  backed  off 
down  the  corridor — still  bowing — to  rejoin  his 
colleagues  in  the  first-class  section  of  the  car.  In 
the  quarter  of  an  hour  there  was  still  to  wait  be- 
fore the  line  was  clear  for  the  departure  of  our 
train,  we  had  our  first  chance  for  a  peep  into 
Germany  through  the  window  of  the  Press. 

The  four-page  sheets  turned  out  to  be  copies  of 
Vorwarts,  the  Kolnische  Volkszeitung  und 
Handels-Blatt,  the  Weser  Zeitung,  of  Bremen,  the 
Wilhelmshavener  Tageblatt,  and  the  Republik. 
The  latter  styled  itself  the  Sozialdemoltratisches 
Organ  fur  Oldenburg  und  Ostfriesland,  and  the 
Mitteilungsblatt  der  Arbeiter  und  Soldatenrdte. 
It  claimed  to  be  in  its  thirty-second  year,  but 
admitted  that  all  this  time,  except  the  fortnight 
since  the  revolution,  it  had  borne  the  name  of 
Oldenburger  Volksblatt.  It  had  little  in  the  way 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany "     77 

of  news  from  either  the  outside  world  or  the  in- 
terior, the  few  columns  which  it  gave  up  to  this 
purpose  being  filled  with  accounts  of  the  formation 
of  republics  in  various  other  provinces,  and  at- 
tacks upon  members  of  the  acting  Government 
in  Berlin.  Evidently  under  some  sort  of  orders, 
it  mentioned  the  arrival  of  the  Hercules  at  Wil- 
helmshaven  without  comment.  A  socialistic  sheet 
of  Hamburg,  which  turned  up  the  next  day,  showed 
less  restraint  in  this  connection,  for  it  stated  that 
the  Allied  Commission  had  altered  its  decision  not 
to  meet  the  Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  representa- 
tives, and  that  negotiations  were  now  in  progress 
in  which  the  latter  were  taking  a  prominent  part. 
Tangible  evidence  of  the  truth  of  this  statement, 
it  added,  might  be  found  in  the  fact  that  dele- 
gates from  the  Workmen  and  Soldiers  accom- 
panied Allied  parties  whenever  they  landed. 
Vorwdrts  tried  to  convey  the  same  false  impres- 
sion to  its  readers,  but  rather  less  brazenly.  The 
Kolnische  Volkszeitung  printed  a  dispatch  from 
London,  in  which  the  Daily  Mail  was  quoted  as 
supporting  the  "  australischen  Premier  ministers 
Hughes'  ''  demand  of  an  indemnity  of  "acht  mil- 
Harden  Pfund  Sterling"  from  Germany,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  prove  in  the  course  of  an  impassioned 
leader  of  two  columns  why  the  demanding  of  any 
indemnity  at  all  was  in  direct  violation  of  the 


78  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

pledged  word  of  the  Allies,  to  say  nothing  of  Wil- 
son's Fourteen  Points.  A  significant  circum- 
stance was  the  inclusion  in  each  paper  of  a  part  of 
a  column  of  comment  on  the  movement  of  prices 
of  "Landesprodukte"  on  the  American  markets. 

The  advertisements,  which  took  up  rather  more 
than  half  of  each  sheet,  proved  by  long  odds  more 
interesting  than  the  news.  These  were  quite  in 
best  " peace  time"  style.  The  Metropol-Variete 
(Neu  renoviert!)  informed  all  and  sundry  that 
"Vier  elegante  junge  Damen!"  disported  them- 
selves in  its  "Kabarett"  every  evening.  The 
head-line  of  the  great  "Spezuditdten  Programm" 
in  the  theatre  was  "Die  Grosse  Sensation:  Mar- 
tini Szeny,  genannt  der  '  Ausbrecher-Konig'!"  A 
number  in  the  Metropolis  program  which  appealed 
to  us  more  than  all  the  others,  however,  was  one 
which  was  featured  further  down  the  list,  for 
there,  sandwiched  between  "  KITTY  DEANOS  UND 
PARTNEK,  Kunstschutzen,"  and  "HANS  ROMANS, 
Liedersanger,"  appeared  "  LITTLE  WILLY,  Tra- 
pez-Volant." 

"And  all  the  time  we  thought  he  was  in  Hol- 
land, ' '  dryly  commented  the  American  officer  who 
made  the  discovery. 

One  could  not  help  wondering  respecting  the 
" etymology "  of  "Little  Willy,"  and  whether  that 
1 1  Flying  Trapezist ' '  knew  that  he  bore  the  favour- 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     79 

ite  Allied  nickname  for  His  ex-Eoyal  and  Imperial 
Highness,  Frederick  Wilhelm  Hohenzollern, 
Crown  Prince  of  Germany,  etc.,  etc. 

Evidence  that  Hun  ' '  piracy '  '  had  not  been  con- 
fined to  their  U-boats  was  unearthed  in  the  dis- 
covery that  the  Adler-Theatre  of  Bremen  adver- 
tised two  performances  of  "DiE  MODEBNE  EVA" 
for  that  very  day — Heute  Sonntag!  "I  ran 
across  the  chap  who  wrote  "The  Modern  Eve' 
somewhere  out  California  way,"  said  the  same 
American  who  had  spoken  before.  "He  was  some 
bore,  too,  take  it  from  me ;  but  he  never  deserved 
anything  as  bad  as  this,  for  the  show  itself  was 
pretty  nifty,"  and  he  began  humming,  in  ex- 
temporaneously translated  German  the  words  of 
"Good-bye  Everybody,"  the  popular  "song  hit" 
from  "The  Modern  Eve." 

It  was  a  Berlin  theatre  which  advertised  "2 
Vorstellungen  2"  of  "Hamlet,"  which  ended  up 
the  notice  with  l  '  KAUCHEN  STRENG  VERBOTEN  ! "  in 
large  type.  "If  they  burn  the  same  stuff  in  Ber- 
lin that  our  Workmen  and  Soldier  friends  in  the 
first-class  are  putting  up  that  smoke  barrage  in 
the  corridor  with,"  said  an  airship  officer,  "it 
would  have  to  be  a  case  of  'Rauchen  Streng  Ver- 
boten'  or  gas  masks." 

A  number  of  booksellers  advertised  long  lists 
of  "Neue  Werke,"  but  one  searched  these  in  vain 


80  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

for  any  of  the  notorious  polemics  directed  against 
the  Allies,  or  yet  for  the  writings  of  any  of  the 
great  protagonists  of  the  ' '  Deutschland  Ueber 
Alles"  movement.  Most  of  them  appeared  to 
be  "Romances"  or  out-and-out  "  Thrillers. " 
Bachem,  of  Koln,  described  "Der  Meister"  as 
"Der  Roman  eines  Spiritisten";  "Wettertannen" 
as  a  " Tiroler  Roman  aus  der  Gegenwart  von  Hans 
Schrott";  "Wenn  Irland  dich  ruff  as  "Der 
Roman  eines  Fliegers" ;  and  "Der  blutige 
Behr  pfennig"  as  "Erzahlung  aus  dem  Let  en 
eines  Priest  ers."  Although  one  would  have 
thought  that  the  German  people  had  had  quite 
enough  of  that  kind  of  thing  from  their  late  Gov- 
ernment, every  book  I  saw  advertised  in  any  of 
these  papers  was  fiction. 

Perhaps  the  most  optimistic  of  all  these  ad- 
vertisements was  that  of  the  "Kismet  Labora- 
torium,"  of  Berlin,  in  the  Republik,  which  claimed 
to  make  a  preparation  for  the  improvement  of  the 
female  form  divine.  Now  that  the  war  was  over, 
it  read,  they  no  longer  felt  any  hesitation  in  an- 
nouncing that  their  great  discovery  was  based 
on  a  certain  product  which  could  only  be  obtained 
from  British  India.  As  their  pre-war  stock  had 
only  been  eked  out  by  dilution  with  an  not  en- 
tirely satisfactory  substitute,  it  was  with  great 
pleasure  that  they  informed  their  many  customers 


of  "  Starving  Germany"     81 

that  they  hoped  shortly  to  conclude  arrangements 
by  which  the  famous  "Bakatal-Busenwasser" 
could  again  be  furnished  in  all  its  pristine  purity 
and  strength. 

So  here,  it  appears,  was  an  indirect  admission 
to  prove  wrong  the  individual  who  averred  that 
the  German  chemists  could  make  out  of  coal  tar 
anything  in  the  world  except  a  gentleman.  It 
seems  that  all  the  time  they  had  been  dependent 
upon  British  India  for  even  the  "makings"  of  a 
lady.  It  would  have  been  interesting  to  know 
what  the  ' l  arrangements ' '  were  by  which  the  sup- 
ply was  to  be  renewed.  We  were  discussing  that 
question  when  the  train  started,  and  a  "flat" 
wheel  on  the  "bogey  "  immediately  under  our  com- 
partment put  an  end  to  casual  conversation. 

On  the  outskirts  of  the  town  we  passed  by  a 
great  series  of  sidings  closely  packed  with  oil- 
tank-cars  from  all  parts  of  the  Central  Empires. 
The  most  of  them  were  marked  in  German,  but 
with  names  which  indicated  beyond  a  doubt  that 
they  had  been  employed  in  serving  the  Galician 
fields  of  Austria,  On  many  more  the  name  of 
Eumania  appeared  in  one  form  or  another,  and 
several  bore  the  names  of  the  British  concerns 
from  which  they  had  been  seized  when  the  rich 
oilfields  of  that  unlucky  country  fell  to  Macken- 
sen's  armies.  A  considerable  number  of  cars 


82  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

were  marked  with  Russian  characters,  which  led 
to  the  assumption  that  they  had  been  seized  in 
Courland  or  the  Ukraine,  and  that  they  had  orig- 
inally run  to  and  from  the  greatest  of  the  world  's 
oilfields  at  Baku,  on  the  Caspian.  There  was 
a  persistent  report  at  one  time  that  Germany  was 
constructing  an  oil-pipe-line  from  the  Galician 
fields  to  Kiel  and  Wilhelmshaven.  Although 
quite  practicable  from  an  engineering  standpoint, 
this  appears  never  to  have  been  seriously  con- 
sidered, probably  on  account  of  the  great  demand 
for  labour  and  material  it  would  have  made  at 
a  time  when  both  could  be  used  to  better  ad- 
vantage in  other  ways. 

Seeing  me  standing  at  the  window  in  the  cor- 
ridor looking  at  the  oil-cars,  my  young  compan- 
ion of  the  steel-tyred  auto  came  out  of  his  com- 
partment and  moved  up  beside  me.  "As  you  will 
see,"  he  said  with  his  slow  precision,  "we  never 
lacked  badly  for  the  oil  for  our  U-boats.  The 
one  time  that  we  had  the  great  worry  was  when 
the  Russians  had  the  fields  of  Galicia.  That  cut 
off  our  only  large  supply.  But  luckily  we  had 
great  stocks  in  hand  when  the  war  started,  and 
these  were  quite  sufficient  for  our  needs  until 
the  Russians  had  been  driven  out  of  Austria.  If 
they  had  remained  there,  it  is  hard  to  see  how 
we  could  have  kept  going  after  our  reserve  was 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     83 

finished.  But  they  did  not  stay,  the  poor  Rus- 
sians,  and  they  did  not  even  have  the  wits  to 
destroy  the  wells  properly.  We  had  them  pro- 
ducing again  at  full  capacity  in  a  few  months. 
Now,  if  they  had  been  destroyed  like  the  Eng- 
lish destroyed  the  wells  in  Rumania  it  would 
have  been  different.  There,  in  many  places,  we 
found  it  the  cheaper  to  drill  the  new  wells.  Ah, 
the  English  are  very  thorough  when  they  have 
the  time,  both  in  making  and  un-making." 

As  we  passed  through  the  suburbs  of  Wilhelms- 
haven  we  began  to  get  some  inkling  of  where  the 
food  came  from.  All  back  yards  and  every  spare 
patch  of  ground  were  in  vegetables.  Nowhere  in 
England  or  France  have  I  seen  the  surface  of  the 
earth  so  fully  occupied,  so  thoroughly  turned  to 
account.  Some  thrifty  cultivators,  after  filling  up 
their  available  ground  with  rows  of  cabbages  and 
Brussels  sprouts,  appeared  to  have  been  grow- 
ing beans  and  peas  in  hanging  baskets  and  boxes 
of  earth  set  up  on  frames.  One  genius  had  erected 
a  forcing  bed  for  what  (to  judge  from  the  dead 
stalks)  looked  like  cucumbers  or  squashes  on  the 
thatched  roof  of  his  cowshed.  The  only  thing 
needed  to  cap  the  climax  of  agricultural  industry 
would  have  been  a  "hanging  garden"  suspended 
from  captive  balloons. 

As  we  ran  out  of  the  suburban  area  and  into 


84  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

the  open  country  the  allotments  gave  place  to 
large  and  well-tilled  farms,  or  rather  to  farms 
which  had  been  well  tilled  in  the  season  favour- 
able to  cultivation.  At  the  moment  work  was 
practically  at  a  standstill  on  account  of  the  in- 
cessant rains  which  had  inundated  considerable 
areas  and  left  the  ground  heavy,  water-logged, 
and  temporarily  unfit  for  the  plough.  The  re- 
sults of  a  really  bountiful  harvest,  however,  were 
to  be  seen  in  bulging  barns  and  sheds  and  plethoric 
haystacks  and  fodder  piles.  The  surest  evidence 
that  there  had  actually  been  an  over-supply  of 
vegetables  was  the  careless  way  in  which  such 
things  as  cabbages,  swedes,  and  beets  were  being 
handled  in  transport.  A  starving  people  does  not 
leave  food  of  this  kind  to  rot  along  the  road 
nor  in  the  station  yards,  evidences  of  which  we 
saw  every  now  and  then  for  the  next  forty  miles. 
Practically  the  whole  of  the  North  Sea  littoral 
of  Germany  between  the  Kiel  Canal  and  the  Dutch 
border — across  the  central  section  of  which  we 
were  now  passing — is  the  same  sort  of  a  flat,  sea- 
level  expanse,  and  has  the  same  rich,  alluvial  soil, 
as  the  plains  of  Flanders.  This  region,  like  Den- 
mark and  Holland,  had  been  largely  given  over 
to  dairying  before  the  war.  The  conversion  of  it 
from  a  pastoral  to  an  agricultural  country,  by 
ploughing  up  the  endless  miles  of  meadows,  has 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     85 

resulted  in  a  huge  output  of  foodstuffs,  and  has 
put  the  people  inhabiting  it  well  beyond  the  risk 
of  anything  approaching  starvation,  no  matter 
how  long  the  blockade  might  be  kept  up.  The  offi- 
cers accompanying  us  were  quite  frank  in  stating 
that  the  farmers  had  prospered  and  waxed  wealthy 
by  selling  their  surplus  in  the  nearest  industrial 
centres,  such  as  Bremen  and  Hamburg.  The 
pinch,  they  said,  would  come  when  the  people 
began  trying  to  restock  their  dairy  farms  again, 
for  at  least  a  half  of  the  cattle  had  been  killed  off 
as  their  pastures  had  been  put  under  cultivation. 

Judging  by  the  very  few  cattle  in  sight — in 
comparison  with  the  number  one  has  always  seen 
in  the  fields  in  dairying  regions — one  would  be 
inclined  to  estimate  the  reduction  of  stock  at  a 
good  deal  more  than  half.  The  fact  that  it  is 
the  local  custom  to  keep  the  best  of  their  stock 
stabled  during  the  most  inclement  months  of  the 
winter  doubtless  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the 
few  animals  in  sight.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there 
was  really  very  little  grazing  left  for  those  that 
might  have  been  turned  out.  Sheep  were  also  ex- 
tremely scarce,  but  as  this  was  not  a  region  where 
they  were  ever  found  in  great  numbers  one  re- 
marked their  absence  less  than  that  of  cattle. 

But  the  most  astonishing  thing  of  all  was  that 
not  a  single  pig  was  sighted  on  either  the  go- 


86  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ing  or  returning  journey.  The  sight  of  what 
appeared  to  be  a  long-empty  sty  started  a  com- 
parison of  observations  from  which  it  transpired 
that  no  one  watching  from  either  of  our  two  com- 
partments had  so  much  as  clapped  an  eye  on 
what  the  world  has  long  regarded  as  Germany's 
favourite  species  of  live  stock.  After  that  we  all 
began  standing ' '  pig  lookout, ' '  but  the  only  l '  View 
Halloo "  raised  was  a  false  one,  the  "schwein" 
turning  out  to  be  a  dachshund,  and  a  very 
scrawny  one  at  that.  Piqued  by  this  astonishing 
porcine  elusiveness,  the  "air"  parties  (upon 
which  most  of  the  land  travel  devolved)  met  in 
the  ward-room  of  the  Hercules  that  evening  and 
contributed  to  form  a  "Pig  Pool,"  the  whole  of 
which  was  to  go  to  the  first  member  who  could 
produce  incontestable  evidence  that  he  had  seen 
a  pig  upon  German  soil.  Astounding  as  it  may 
seem,  this  prize  was  never  awarded.  The  claim 
of  one  aspirant  was  ruled  out  because,  on  cross- 
questioning,  he  had  to  admit  that  his  "pig"  wore 
a  German  naval  uniform  and  had  tried,  by  vigor- 
ous lying,  to  head  him  off  from  a  hangar  contain- 
ing a  very  interesting  type  of  a  new  seaplane. 
Another  claimant  proved  that  he  had  actually  seen 
a  pig,  but  only  to  have  the  prize  withheld  when 
it  transpired  that  he  had  flushed  nothing  more 
lifelike  than  the  plaster  image  of  a  pig  which, 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     87 

cleaver  in  hand,  stood  as  a  butcher's  sign  in  a 
village  on  the  island  of  Kiigen.  A  third  claimant 
would  have  won  the  award  had  he  chanced  along 
five  minutes  sooner  when  the  villagers  were 
butchering  a  pig  on  the  occasion  when  his  party 
visited  the  Great  Belt  Islands  to  inspect  the  forts. 
Even  in  this  case,  though,  we  should  have  had 
to  weigh  carefully  the  evidence  of  an  Irish- Ameri- 
can officer  of  the  same  party,  who  said  that  it  was 
"a  dead  cert  that  pig  had  died  from  hog  cholera 
a  good  hour  before  it  was  killed ! ' ' 

Although  the  fact  that  none  of  the  members 
of  the  various  Allied  sub-commissions  saw  so 
much  as  a  single  live  hog  during  the  course  of 
the  many  hundred  miles  travelled  by  train,  motor, 
carriage,  or  foot  in  North- Western  Germany,  does 
not  mean  that  the  species  has  become  extinct 
there  by  any  means,  there  is  still  no  doubt  that 
the  numbers  of  this  popular  and  appropriate  sym- 
bol of  the  Hun's  grossness  have  been  greatly  re- 
duced, and  that  schiveine  will  be  among  the  top 
items  on  their  list  of  "immediate  requirements " 
forwarded  to  the  Allied  Eelief  Committee. 

Hurried  as  was  this  first  of  our  journeys  across 
Oldenburg,  I  was  still  able  to  see  endless  evi- 
dence not  only  of  the  intensive  cultivation,  but 
also  the  careful  and  scientific  fertilization,  which 
I  had  good  opportunity  to  study  later  at  closer 


88  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

range  in  Mecklenburg  and  Schleswig.  Stable 
manure  and  mulches  of  sedulously  conserved  de- 
caying vegetable  matter  were  being  everywhere 
applied  to  the  land  according  to  the  most  ap- 
proved modern  practice.  This  I  had  expected  to 
see,  for  I  already  knew  the  German  as  an  in- 
telligent and  well-instructed  farmer,  but  what  did 
surprise  me  was  clear  proof  that  the  supply  of 
artificial  fertilizers — phosphates,  nitrates,  and 
lime — was  being  fairly  well  maintained.  Truck 
loads  of  these  indispensable  adjuncts  to  sustained 
production  standing  in  station  sidings  showed 
that,  and  so  did  the  state  of  the  fields  themselves ; 
for  the  fresh  young  shoots  of  winter  wheat,  which 
I  saw  everywhere  pushing  up  and  taking  full  ad- 
vantage of  the  almost  unprecedentedly  mild  De- 
cember weather,  showed  no  traces  of  the  "hungri- 
ness"  I  have  so  often  noted  during  the  last  year 
or  two  in  some  of  the  over-cropped  and  under- 
fertilized  fields  of  England. 

What  with  prisoners  and  the  unremitting  labour 
of  women  and  children,  Germany  accomplished  re- 
markable things  in  the  way  of  production.  The 
area  of  cultivation  was  not  only  largely  increased, 
but  the  production  of  the  old  fields  was  also  kept 
at  a  high  level.  In  no  part  of  the  world  have  I 
ever  seen  fairer  farmsteads  than  those  through 
which  the  party  inspecting  the  Great  Belt  forts 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     89 

north  of  Kiel  drove  for  many  miles  one  day. 
They  struck  me  as  combining  something  of  the 
picturesqueness  of  a  Somerset  farm  with  the 
prosperous  efficiency  of  a  California  ranch.  And 
it  is  as  a  California  rancher  myself  that  I  say 
that  I  only  wish  I  had  soil  and  outbuildings  that 
would  come  anywhere  nearly  up  to  the  average 
of  those  throughout  this  favoured  region  of 
Schleswig.  It  is  true  that  many  of  the  people 
thereabouts  are  Danish,  and  I  even  saw  a  Danish 
flag  discreetly  displayed  behind  the  neat  lace  cur- 
tains of  one  farmhouse.  But,  Danish  or  German, 
they  are  producing  huge  quantities  of  good  food, 
enough  to  keep  the  people  of  less  fertile  regions 
of  "starving  Deutschland"  far  from  want. 

It  was  just  before  our  arrival  at  Norddeich  at 
the  end  of  this  first  day's  railway  journey  that  I 
spoke  to  the  German  officer  who  had  joined  me 
at  the  window  of  the  corridor  about  the  very  well- 
fed  look  of  the  people  we  had  seen  on  the  streets  of 
Wilhelmshaven  and  at  the  stations  of  the  towns 
and  villages  through  which  we  had  been  passing. 
"It  is  true,"  he  replied,  "that  we  have  never  suf- 
fered for  food  in  this  part  of  the  country,  and 
that  is  because  it  is  so  largely  agricultural.  But 
wait  until  you  go  to  the  industrial  centres.  In 
Hamburg  and  Bremen,  it  is  there  that  you  will 
see  the  want  and  hunger.  It  is  for  those  poor 


90  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

people  that  the  Allies  must  provide  much  food 
without  delay. " 

Personally,  I  did  not  go  either  to  Hamburg  or 
Bremen,  being  absent  with  parties  visiting  the 
Zeppelin  stations  at  Nordholz  and  Tondern  at  the 
time  the  Shipping  Board  of  the  Naval  Commission 
was  inspecting  British  merchantmen  interned  in 
these  once  great  ports.  A  member  of  that  board, 
however,  assured  me  that  he  had  observed  no  ma- 
terial difference  in  the  appearance  of  the  people 
in  the  streets  of  Bremen  and  Hamburg  and  those 
of  Wilhelmshaven.  His  party  had  taken  "  pot- 
luck  "  at  the  Hotel  Atlantic  in  Hamburg,  where 
the  food  had  been  found  ample  in  quantity  and  not 
unappetizing,  even  on  a  meatless  day. 

"But  what  of  the  poor?"  I  asked.  "Did  you 
see  anything  of  the  quarters  that  would  corre- 
spond to  the  slums  of  London  or  Liverpool," 

"Germany,"  he  replied,  "to  her  credit,  has 
very  few  places  where  the  housing  is  outwardly  so 
bad  as  in  many  British  industrial  cities  I  could 
name.  We  did  not  see  much  of  the  parts  of 
Bremen  and  Hamburg  where  the  working-classes 
live;  but  we  did  see  a  good  deal  of  the  workers 
themselves.  I  know  under-feeding  when  I  see  it, 
for  I  was  in  Eussia  but  a  few  months  ago.  But, 
so  far  as  I  could  see,  the  chief  difference  be- 
tween the  men  in  the  dockyards  and  shipbuilding 


Impressions  of  "  Starving  Germany"     91 

establishments  of  Hamburg  and  those  of  the  Tyne 
and  Clyde  was  that  the  former  were  working 
harder.  They  merely  glanced  up  at  us  as  we 
passed,  with  little  curiosity  and  no  resentment, 
and  went  right  on  with  the  job  in  hand.  No, 
everything  considered,  I  should  not  say  that  any 
one  is  suffering  seriously  for  lack  of  food  in  either 
Bremen  or  Hamburg/* 

"No  one  is  suffering  seriously  for  lack  of  food." 
That  was  the  feeling  of  all  of  us  at  the  end  of 
our  first  day  in  "starving  Germany, "  and  (if  I 
may  anticipate)  it  was  also  our  verdict  when  the 
Hercules  sailed  for  England,  three  weeks  later. 


IV 

ACROSS   THE  SANDS   TO    NORDERNEY 

THE  names  of  "Norderney"  and  "Borkum"  on 
the  list  of  seaplane  stations  to  be  inspected  seemed 
to  strike  a  familiar  chord  of  memory,  but  it  was 
not  until  I  chanced  upon  a  dog-eared  copy  of 
"The  Riddle  of  the  Sands "  on  a  table  in  the 
"Commission  Room"  of  the  Hercules  that  it 
dawned  upon  me  where  I  had  heard  them  before. 
There  was  no  time  at  the  moment  to  re-turn  the 
pages  of  this  most  consummately  told  yarn  of  its 
kind  ever  written,  but,  prompted  by  a  happy  in- 
spiration, I  slipped  the  grimy  little  volume  into  my 
pocket.  And  there  (as  the  clattering  special 
which  was  to  take  us  to  Norddeich,  en  route  to 
Norderney,  turned  off  from  the  Bremen  main- 
line a  few  miles  outside  of  Wilhelmshaven)  I 
found  it  again,  just  as  the  green  water-logged 
fields  and  bogs  of  the  "land  of  the  seven  siels" 
began  to  unroll  in  twin  panoramas  on  either  side. 
Opening  the  book  at  random  somewhere  toward 
the  middle,  my  eye  was  drawn  to  a  paragraph 
beginning  near  the  top  of  the  page  facing  a  much- 
pencilled  chart. 

92 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney        93 

'.  .  .  The  mainland  is  that  district  of  Prussia 
that  is  known  as  East  Friesland."  (I  remember 
now  that  it  was  "Carruthers,"  writing  in  the 
Dtdcibella,  off  Wangerogg,  who  was  describing 
the  ' i  lay  of  the  land. " )  ' '  It  is  a  short,  flat-topped 
peninsula,  bounded  on  the  west  by  the  Ems  estuary 
and  beyond  that  by  Holland,  and  on  the  east 
by  the  Jade  estuary;  a  low-lying  country,  con- 
taining great  tracts  of  marsh,  and  few  towns  of 
any  size;  on  the  north  side  none.  Seven  islands 
lie  off  the  coast.  All,  except  Borkum,  which  is 
round,  are  attenuated  strips,  slightly  crescent- 
shaped,  rarely  more  than  a  mile  broad,  and  taper- 
ing at  the  ends;  in  length  averaging  about  six 
miles,  from  Norderney  and  Juist,  which  are  seven 
and  nine  respectively,  to  little  Baltrum,  which  is 
only  two  and  a  half. ' ' 

As  I  turned  the  book  sideways  to  look  at  the 
chart  the  whole  fascinating  story  came  back  with 
a  rush.  What  man  who  has  ever  knocked  about 
in  small  boats,  tramped  roads  and  poked  about 
generally  in  places  where  he  had  no  business  to 
poke  could  forget  it?  The  East  Friesland  penin- 
sula, with  its  "seven  little  rivers''  and  "seven 
channels "  and  "seven  islands,"  was  the  "take 
off"  for  the  German  army  which  was  to  cross  the 
North  Sea  in  barges  to  land  on  the  sands  of  "The 
Wash"  for  the  invasion  of  England.  And  this 


94  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

very  line  over  which  our  rickety  two-car  special 
was  clinkety-clanking — I  wished  that  "Carruth- 
ers"  could  have  seen  what  a  pitiful  little  old  single- 
track  it  had  become — was  the  "strategic  trunk'7 
over  which  the  invading  cohorts  were  to  be  shunted 
in  their  thousands  to  the  waiting  deep-sea-going 
barges  in  the  canalized  siels.  There  was  Essen, 
which  was  to  have  been  the  "nodal  centre "  of 
the  great  embarkation,  and  scarcely  had  I  located 
it  on  the  map  before  its  tall  spire  was  stabbing 
the  north-western  skyline  as  we  drew  in  to  the 
station. 

A  raw-boned,  red-faced  girl,  her  astonishingly 
powerful  frame  clad  in  a  man's  greasy  overall, 
lowered  the  barrier  at  the  high-road  crossing,  the 
same  barrier,  I  reflected,  which  had  held  up  "Car- 
ruthers,"  Von  Brunning,  and  the  two  "cloaked 
gentlemen "  on  the  night  of  the  great  adventure. 
Four  "land  girls,"  in  close-fitting  brown  cor- 
duroys, with  great  baskets  of  red  cabbages  on  their 
shoulders,  were  just  trudging  off  down  the  road 
to  Dornum,  the  very  "cobbled  causeway  flanked 
with  ditches  and  willows,  and  running  cheek  by 
jowl  with  the  railway  track  "  which  "Carruthers" 
had  followed  by  midnight,  with  "fleecy  clouds  and 
a  half  moon  overhead, "  in  search  of  the  Benser 
Tief.  There  was  even  a  string  of  mighty  barges 
towing  down  the  narrow  canal  of  the  "Tief  "  when 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney        95 

we  crossed  its  rattling  bridge  a  few  minutes  later. 
And  just  as  "Carruthers"  described,  the  road  and 
railway  clung  closely  together  all  the  way  to 
Dornum,  and  about  halfway  were  joined  by  a  third 
companion  in  the  shape  of  a  puny  stream,  the 
Neues  Tief.  "  Wriggling  and  doubling  like  an 
eel,  choked  with  sedges  and  reeds, ' '  it  had  no  more 
pretensions  to  being  navigable  now  than  then.  It 
still  "looped  away  into  the  fens  out  of  sight,  to 
reappear  again  close  to  Dornum  in  a  more  dig- 
nified guise, "  and  it  still  skirted  the  town  to  the 
east,  where  there  was  a  towpath  and  a  piled 
wharf.  The  only  change  I  was  able  to^  note  in 
the  momentary  halt  of  the  train  was  that  the  '  '  red- 
brick building  with  the  look  of  a  warehouse,  roof- 
less as  yet  and  with  workmen  on  the  scaffolds, " 
had  now  been  covered  with  red  tile  and  filled  with 
red  cabbages. 

It  was  at  Dornum  that  "Carruthers"  (who  was 
masquerading  as  a  German  sailor  on  his  way  to 
visit  a  sister  living  on  Baltrum)  fell  in  at  a  primi- 
tive Gasthaus  with  an  ex-crimp,  drunken  with 
much  schnappsen,  who  insisted  on  accompanying 
him  on  a  detour  to  Dornumersiel,  where  he  had 
planned  to  do  a  hasty  bit  of  spying.  From  the 
right-hand  window  I  caught  a  brief  glimpse  of 
the  ribbon  of  the  coastward  road,  down  the  length 
of  which  the  oddly-assorted  pair — the  Foreign 


96  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

Office  precis  writer  and  the  one-time  "shanghai" 
artist — had  stumbled  arm-in-arm,  treating  each 
other  in  every  gin-shop  on  the  way. 

6 '  Carruthers '  "  detour  to  the  coast  carried  him 
out  of  sight  of  the  railway,  so  that  he  missed  the 
little  red-brick  schoolhouse,  close  up  by  the  track, 
where  the  buxom  mistress  had  her  whole  brood 
of  young  Fritzes  and  Gretchens  lined  up  along 
the  fence  of  the  right-of-way  to  wave  and  cheer 
our  train  as  it  passed.  How  she  received  word 
of  the  coming  of  the  "Allied  Special' '  we  could 
only  conjecture,  but  it  was  probably  through  some 
Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Council  friend  in  the 
railway  service.  But  even  so,  as  the  schoolhouse 
was  three  miles  from  the  nearest  station  and  had 
nothing  suggestive  of  a  telephone  line  running  to 
it,  she  must  have  had  her  banzai  party  standing 
by  in  readiness  a  good  part  of  the  forenoon  ses- 
sion. Hurriedly  dropping  a  window  (they  work 
rather  hard  on  account  of  the  stiffness  of  the  thick 
paper  strap),  I  was  just  able  to  gather  that  the 
burden  of  the  greeting  was  "Good  morning,  good 
morning,  sir!"  repeated  many  times  in  guttural 
chorus.  If  any  of  them  were  shouting  "Wel- 
come ! "  as  one  or  two  of  our  party  thought  they 
heard,  it  escaped  my  ears.  They  did  the  thing  so 
well  one  was  sure  it  had  been  rehearsed,  and  won- 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney        97 

ered  how  long  it  had  been  since  those  same 
throaty  trebles  had  been  raised  in  the  "Hymn 
of  Hate."  If  "Carruthers"  spying  visit  to 
Dornumersiel  resulted  in  anything  more  "  re- 
vealing "  than  the  dig  in  the  ribs  one  of  the  young- 
sters got  from  the  mistress  for  (apparently)  not 
cheering  lustily  enough,  he  neglected  to  set  it  down 
in  his  story.  This  little  incident  prepared  us 
for  much  we  were  to  see  later  in  the  way  of 
German  "conciliation"  methods. 

"Carruthers,"  when  he  returned  to  the  rail- 
way again  and  took  train  at  Hage,  made  the 
journey  from  the  latter  station  to  Norden  in  ten 
minutes.  The  fact  that  our  special  took  twenty 
is  sufficient  commentary  on  the  deterioration  of 
German  road-beds  and  rolling  stock.  Norden, 
which  is  the  junction  point  for  Emden,  to  the 
south,  and  Norddeich,  to  the  north,  is  a  good- 
sized  town,  and  we  noticed  here  that  the  streets 
were  beflagged  and  arched  with  evergreen  as  at 
Wilhelmshaven,  doubtless  in  expectation  of  re- 
turning troops.  While  our  engines  were  being 
changed,  a  couple  of  workmen,  standing  back  in 
the  depths  of  a  tool-house,  kept  waving  their  hands 
ingratiatingly  every  time  the  armed  guard  (who 
always  paced  up  and  down  the  platform  while 
the  train  was  at  a  station)  turned  his  back.  What 


98  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

they  were  driving  at — unless  co-operating  with 
the  children  in  the  general  "  conciliation ' '  pro- 
gram— we  were  not  able  to  make  out. 

From  Norden  to  Norddeich  was  a  run  of  but 
three  or  four  miles,  but  a  bad  road-bed  and  a  worse 
engine  made  the  journey  a  tedious  if  fitting  finale 
to  our  painful  progress  across  the  East  Frisian 
peninsula.  Halting  but  a  few  moments  at  the 
main  station,  the  train  was  shunted  to  a  spur 
which  took  it  right  out  to  the  quay  where  the  great 
dyke  bent  inward  to  form  a  narrow  artificial  har- 
bour. A  few  steps  across  the  slippery  moss- 
covered  stones,  where  the  falling  tide  had  bared 
the  sloping  landing,  took  us  to  where  a  small  but 
powerfully  engined  steam  launch  was  waiting  to 
convey  the  party  to  Norderney.  Manned  by  naval 
ratings,  it  had  the  same  aspect  of  neglect  which 
characterized  all  of  the  warships  we  had  visited. 
The  men  saluted  smartly,  however,  and  on  our 
expressing  a  wish  to  remain  in  the  open  air  in 
preference  to  the  stuffy  cabin,  they  tumbled  below 
and  brought  up  cushions  and  ranged  them  along 
the  deck-house  to  sit  upon.  The  Allied  officers 
dangled  their  legs  to  port,  the  German  officers  to 
starboard,  while  the  ex-sailor  and  the  "  plain- 
clothes  "  detective  from  the  Workmen's  and  Sol- 
diers' Council  disposed  themselves  authorita- 
tively in  the  wheel-house. 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney        99 

A  few  minutes'  run  between  heavy  stone  jetties 
brought  us  to  the  open  sea,  where  the  launch  be- 
gan threading  a  channel  which  seemed  to  be 
marked  mostly  by  buoys,  but  here  and  there  by 
close-set  rows  of  saplings,  now  just  beginning  to 
show  their  scraggly  tops  above  the  falling  water. 
It  was  the  sight  of  these  latter  marks — so  char- 
acteristic of  these  waters — that  reminded  me  that 
we  had  at  last  come  out  into  the  real  hunting 
ground  of  the  Dulcibella,  where  "Davies"  and 
"Carruthers"  had  puzzled  out  the  solution  of 
1  'The  Riddle  of  the  Sands."  Norderney  and 
Juist  and  Borkum  and  the  other  of  the  "  seven 
islands "  strung  their  attenuated  lengths  in  a 
broken  barrier  to  seaward,  and  between  them  and 
the  mainland  we  were  leaving  astern  stretched 
the  amazing  mazes  of  the  sands,  alternately  bared 
and  covered  by  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tides.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  area,  according  to  "Carruthers," 
were  dry  at  low  water,  when  the  ' '  remaining  third 
becomes  a  system  of  lagoons  whose  distribution 
is  controlled  by  the  natural  drift  of  the  North 
Sea  as  it  forces  its  way  through  the  intervals  be- 
tween the  islands.  Each  of  these  intervals  re- 
sembles the  bar  of  a  river,  and  is  obstructed  by 
dangerous  banks  over  which  the  sea  pours  at 
every  tide,  scooping  out  a  deep  pool.  This  fans 
out  and  ramifies  to  east  and  west  as  the  pent-up 


100          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

current  frees  itself,  encircles  the  islands,  and 
spreads  over  the  intervening  flats.  But  the  fur- 
ther it  penetrates  the  less  scouring  force  it  has, 
and  as  a  result  no  island  is  girt  completely  by  a 
low-water  channel.  About  midway  at  the  back 
of  each  of  them  is  a  l watershed,'  only  covered  for 
five  or  six  hours  out  of  the  twelve.  A  boat,  even 
of  the  lightest  draught,  navigating  behind  the 
islands  must  choose  its  moment  for  passing 
these. " 

"I  trust  we  have  ' chosen  our  moment '  care- 
fully, "  I  said  to  myself  after  reading  those  lines 
and  reflecting  what  a  large  part  of  their  time  the 
Didcibetta,  Kormoran,  and  all  the  other  craft  in 
the  "Riddle"  had  spent  careened  upon  sand-spits. 
To  reassure  myself,  I  leaned  back  and  asked  one 
of  the  German  officers  if  boats  didn't  run  aground 
pretty  often  on  that  run.  "Oh,  yes,  most  often," 
was  the  reply,  "but  only  at  low  water  or  when  the 
fog  is  very  thick.  With  this  much  water,  and 
when  we  can  see  as  far  as  we  can  now" — there 
was  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  visibility — "there 
is  no  danger.  Our  difficulty  will  come  when  we 
try  to  return  this  evening  on  the  low  water. ' ' 

It  may  have  been  my  imagination,  but  I  thought 
he  put  a  shade  more  accent  on  that  try  than  a 
real  optimist  would  have  done  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances. But  then,  I  told  myself,  it  was 


Across  the  Sands  to 

hardly  a  time  when  one  could  expect  a  German 
officer  to  be  optimistic  about  anything. 

Heading  out  through  the  well-marked  channel 
of  the  Buse  Tief,  between  the  sands  of  the  Itzen- 
dorf  Plate  to  port  and  Hohe  Riff  to  starboard, 
twenty  minutes  found  the  launch  in  the  opener 
waters  off  the  west  end  of  Norderney  where,  with 
its  light  draught,  it  had  no  longer  to  thread  the 
winding  of  the  buoyed  fairway.  Standing  on 
northward  until  the  red  roofs  and  white  walls  of 
the  town  sharpened  into  ghostly  relief  on  the  cur- 
tain of  the  mist,  course  was  altered  five  or  six 
points  to  starboard,  and  we  skirted  a  broad  stretch 
of  sandy  beach,  from  the  upper  end  of  which 
the  even  slopes  of  concreted  "runs"  were  visi- 
ble, leading  back  to  where,  dimly  outlined  in  their 
darker  opacity,  a  long  row  of  great  hangars 
loomed  fantastically  beyond  the  dunes.  Doubling 
a  sharp  spit,  the  launch  nosed  in  and  brought  up 
alongside  the  landing  of  a  slip  notched  out  of  the 
side  of  the  little  natural  harbour. 

The  Commander  of  the  station — a  small  man, 
but  wiry  and  exceedingly  well  set  up — met  us  as 
we  stepped  off  the  launch.  Then,  and  through- 
out the  visit,  his  quiet  dignity  of  manner  and 
ready  (but  not  too  ready)  courtesy  struck  a  wel- 
come mean  between  the  incongruous  blends  of 
sullenness  and  subserviency  we  had  encountered 


in  the  " Hercules" 

in  meeting  the  officers  in  the  German  warships. 
He  saluted  each  member  of  the  party  as  he  landed, 
but  tactfully  refrained  from  offering  his  hand 
to  any  but  the  attached  German  officers.  It  was 
this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  Commander,  to- 
gether with  the  uniformly  courteous  but  unef- 
fusive  demeanour  of  the  other  officers  with  whom 
we  were  thrown  in  contact,  that  made  the  visit  to 
Norderney  perhaps  the  pleasantest  of  all  the  many 
inspections  carried  out  in  Germany. 

Walking  inland  along  a  brick-paved  road,  we 
passed  a  large  canteen  or  recreation  club  (with 
a  crowd  of  curious  but  quite  respectful  men  lined 
up  along  the  verandah  railings  to  watch  us  go 
by)  before  turning  in  to  a  fine  new  brick-and- 
tile  building  which  appeared  to  be  the  officers' 
Casino.  Leaving  our  overcoats  in  the  reception 
room,  we  joined  the  dozen  or  more  officers  awaiting 
us  at  the  entrance  and  fared  on  by  what  had 
once  been  flower-bordered  walks  to  the  hangars. 
As  we  came  out  upon  the  "tarmac" •—  here,  as  with 
all  German  seaplane  and  airship  stations,  the  runs 
for  the  machines  in  front  of  the  hangars  are  paved 
with  concrete  instead  of  the  tarred  macadam  which 
is  used  so  extensively  in  England  and  France— 
the  men  of  the  station  were  seen  to  be  drawn  up 
by  companies,  as  for  a  review.  Each  company 
stood  smartly  to  attention  at  the  order  of  its  offi- 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney 

cers  as  the  party  came  ahreast  of  it,  and  we — 
both  Allied  and  German  officers — saluted  in  re- 
turn. As  we  passed  on,  each  company  in  turn 
broke  rank  and  quietly  dispersed  to  barracks,  their 
officers  following  on  to  join  the  party  in  the  fur- 
therest  hangar,  where  the  inspection  was  to  be- 
gin. The  discipline  appeared  to  be  faultless,  and 
it  was  soon  evident  that  the  men  and  their  offi- 
cers had  arrived  at  some  sort  of  a  "working  un- 
derstanding "  to  tide  them  over  the  period  of  in- 
spection, if  not  longer. 

The  two  representatives  of  the  Workmen  and 
Soldiers  who  had  accompanied  our  party  from 
Wilhelmshaven  were  allowed  to  be  present  during 
the  inspection,  and  with  them  two  other  "  white- 
banders  "  who  appeared  to  have  been  elected  to 
represent  the  men  of  the  station.  All  other  men 
had  been  cleared  out  of  the  sheds  in  conformity 
with  the  stipulations  of  the  armistice.  Some  un- 
authorized individual — apparently  a  mechanic— 
who,  halfway  through  the  inspection,  was  noticed 
following  the  party,  was  summarily  ordered  out  by 
the  Commander.  He  obeyed  somewhat  sullenly, 
but  though  we  subsequently  saw  him  in  gesticula- 
tive  confab  with  some  of  his  mates  on  the  out- 
side, he  did  not  venture  again  into  any  of  the 
hangars.  That  was  the  nearest  approach  to  in- 
subordination we  saw  in  Norderney. 


!«'         To ''Kiel  in  the  ' '  Hercules ' ' 

The  officers  of  the  station — now  that  we  saw 
them,  a  score  or  more  in  number,  all  together— 
were  a  fine,  business-like  looking  lot.  All  of  them 
wore  some  kind  of  a  decoration,  most  of  them 
several,  and  among  these  were  two  or  three  of 
the  highly-prized  Orders  "Pour  le  Merite."  As 
Norderney  was  the  "star"  seaplane  station,  that 
body  of  keen-eyed,  square-jawed  young  flying  offi- 
cers undoubtedly  included  the  cleverest  naval 
pilots  at  Germany's  disposal.  What  their  many 
decorations  had  been  given  for  there  was,  of 
course,  no  way  of  learning;  nor  did  we  find  out 
whether  the  presence  of  so  many  of  them  at  the 
inspection  was  voluntary  or  by  order.  Though, 
like  their  Commander,  quiet  and  reserved,  they 
were  invariably  courteous  and  willing  in  doing 
anything  to  facilitate  the  tedious  progress  of  in- 
spection. 

There  was  an  amusing  little  incident  which  oc- 
curred during  the  course  of  inspection  in  con- 
nection with  a  very  smart  young  German  officer, 
who,  from  the  moment  I  first  saw  him  at  the  door 
of  the  Casino,  I  kept  telling  myself  I  had  en- 
countered somewhere  before.  For  half  an  hour 
or  more — while  checking  the  names  and  numbers 
of  the  machines  in  my  notebook  as  inspection  was 
completed — my  mind  was  running  back  through 
one  German  colony  or  foreign  settlement  after 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      105 

another,  trying  to  find  the  scene  into  which  that 
florid  face  (with  its  warm,  wide-set  eyes  and  its 
full,  sensual  mouth)  fitted.  Dar-es-Salaam, 
Windhoek,  Tsingtau,  Yap,  Apia,  Herbertshohe — 
I  scurried  back  through  them  all  without  uncov- 
ering a  clue.  Where  else  had  I  met  Germans? 
The  southern  "panhandle"  of  Brazil,  the  south 
of  Chile,  Bagdad—  That  was  the  first  name  to 
awaken  a  sense  of  " nearness."  "Bagdad,  Bag- 
dad Eailway,  Assur,  Mosul,"  I  rambled  on,  and 
just  as  I  began  to  recall  that  I  had  encountered 
Germans  scattered  all  along  the  caravan  route 
from  the  Tigris  to  Syria,  the  object  of  my  in- 
terest turned  up  those  soulful  eyes  of  his  to  look 
"  at  one  of  the  American  officers  clambering  into 
the  "house"  of  the  "Giant"  monoplane  seaboat 
under  inspection  at  the  moment — and  I  had  him. 
"Aleppo!  <Du  Bist  Wie  Eine  Blume!'  "  I 
chortled  exultantly,  my  mind  going  back  to  a  night 
in  June,  1912,  when,  the  day  after  my  arrival 
from  the  desert,  the  American  Consul  had  taken 
me  to  a  party  at  the  Austrian  Consulate  in  honour 
of  some  one  or  other  who  was  about  to  depart 
for  home — wherever  that  was.  Young  Herr 
X—  -  (I  even  recalled  the  name  now)  and  his 
brother,  both  on  the  engineering  staff  of  the  Bag- 
dad Railway,  were  among  the  guests,  the  former 
very  smitten  with  a  sloe-eyed  sylph  of  a  Greek 


106          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

Levantine,  whose  mother  (so  a  friendly  gossip 
told  me)  had  been  a  dancer  in  a  cafe  chantant  in 
Beirut  before  she  married  the  Smyrna  hairdresser 
who  afterwards  made  a  fortune  buying  licorice 
root  from  the  Arabs.  The  girl  (there  was  no 
denying  the  lissome  grace  of  her  serpentine  slen- 
derness)  was  sipping  her  pink  rose-leaf  sherbet 
in  a  balcony  above  the  open  court  when  Herr 
X had  been  asked  to  sing  along  towards  mid- 
night, and  the  fervid  passion  of  his  upturned 
glances  as  he  sung  "Du  Bist  Wie  Eine  Blume" 
as  an  encore  to  "Ich  Liebe  Dich"  had  made  enough 
of  an  impression  on  my  mind  to  need  no  more  than 
the  reminder  vouchsafed  me  to  recall  it. 

Evidently  (perhaps  because  I  had  not  furnished 
him  with  a  similar  reason)  Herr  Borneo  did  not 
trace  any  connection  between  my  present  well- 
rounded,  "sea-faring"  figure  and  the  sun-dried, 
fever- wrecked  anatomy  I  had  dragged  into  Aleppo 
in  1912,  for  I  noted  that  his  eyes  had  passed  over 
me  impersonally  twice  or  thrice  without  a  flicker  of 
recognition.  The  explosiveness  of  my  exultant 
chortle,  however,  must  have  assailed  the  ear  of 
the  German  officer  standing  a  couple  of  paces  in 
front  of  me,  for  he  turned  round  quickly  and 
asked  if  I  had  spoken  to  him. 

"No — er — not  exactly,"  I  stammered,  adding, 
at  the  promptings  of  a  sudden  reckless  impulse, 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      107 

"but  I  would  like  to  ask  if  you  knew  when  Lieu- 
tenant X—  -  over  there  left  the  Bagdad  Railway 
for  the  flying  service  ?" 

"He  was  at  the  head  office  in  Frankfurt  when 
the  war  began,  and  joined  shortly  afterwards, ' ' 
the  young  officer  replied  promptly,  stepping  back 
beside  me.  Then,  as  the  somewhat  surprising 
nature  of  the  query  burst  upon  him,  a  look  of 
astonishment  flushed  his  face  and  a  pucker  of 
suspicion  drew  his  bushy  brows  together  in  a 
perturbed  frown.  "But  may  I  ask — "  he  be- 
gan. 

"And  his  brother  who  was  with  him  in  Aleppo 
—the  one  with  the  scar  on  his  cheek  and  the 
top  of  one  ear  sliced  off,"  I  pressed;  "where  is 
he?" 

"Died  of  fever  in  Nishbin,"  again  came  the 
prompt  answer.  "But"  (blurting  it  out  quickly) 
"how  do  you  know  about  them?" 

Being  human,  and  therefore  weak,  it  was  not 
in  me  to  enlighten  him  with  the  truth,  and  to 
add  that  I  was  merely  a  second-class  Yankee  hack 
writer,  temporarily  togged  out  in  an  R.N.V.R. 
uniform  to  regularize  my  position  of  "Keeper  of 
the  Records ' '  of  the  Allied  Naval  Armistice  Com- 
mission. No,  I  couldn't  do  that.  Indeed,  every- 
thing considered,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  I 
rendered  a  better  service  to  the  Allied  cause  when 


108          To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

I  squared  my  shoulders  importantly  and  delivered 
myself  oracularly  of,  "It  is  our  business  to  know" 
(impressive  pause)  "all." 

My  reward  was  worthy  of  the  effort.  "Ach, 
it  is  but  true,"  sighed  the  young  officer  resignedly. 
"The  English  Intelligence  is  wonderful,  as  we 
have  too  often  found  out." 

"It  is  not  bad,"  L  admitted  modestly,  as  I 
strolled  over  to  make  a  note  of  the  fact  that  the 
machine-gun  mounting  of  one  of  the  Frederich- 
hafens  had  not  been  removed. 

I  could  see  that  my  young  friend  was  burst- 
ing to  impart  to  Lieutenant  X—  -  the  fact  that 
he  was  a  "marked  man,"  but  it  was  just  as  well 
that  no  opportunity  offered  in  the  course  of  the 
inspection.  That  the  ominous  news  had  been 
broken  at  luncheon,  however,  I  felt  certain  from 
the  fact  that  when,  missing  X—  -  from  the  group 
of  officers  who  saluted  us  from  the  doorway  of 
the  Casino  on  our  departure,  I  cast  a  furtive 
glance  at  the  upper  windows,  it  surprised  him 
in  the  act  of  withdrawing  behind  one  of  the  lace 
curtains.  I  only  hope  he  has  nothing  on  his  con- 
science in  the  way  of  hospital  bombings  and  the 
like.  If  he  has,  it  can  hardly  have  failed  to  oc- 
cur to  him  that  his  name  is  inscribed  on  the  Allies ' 
"black-list,"  and  that  he  will  have  to  stand  trial 
in  due  course. 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      109 

It's  a  strange  thing,  this  cropping  up  of  half- 
remembered  faces  in  new  surroundings.  The 
very  next  day,  in  the  course  of  the  visit  to  the 
Zeppelin  station  at  Nordholz — but  I  will  not  an- 
ticipate. 

Under  the  terms  of  the  armistice  the  Germans 
agreed  to  render  'all  naval  seaplanes  unfit  for  use 
by  removing  their  propellers,  machine-guns,  and 
bomb-dropping  equipment,  and  dismantling  their 
wireless  and  ignition  systems.  To  see  that  this 
was  carried  out  on  a  single  machine  was  not  much 
of  a  task,  but  multiplied  by  the  several  scores  in 
such  a  station  as  Norderney,  it  became  a  formid- 
able labour.  To  equalize  the  physical  work,  the 
sub-commission  for  seaplane  stations  arranged 
that  the  British  and  American  officers  included  in 
it  should  take  turn-and-turn  about  in  active  in- 
spection and  checking  the  result  of  the  latter  with 
the  lists  furnished  in  advance  by  the  Germans. 
At  Norderney  the  "active  service"  side  of  the 
program  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  two  American  officers 
to  carry  out.  The  swift  pace  they  set  at  the  out- 
set slowed  down  materially  toward  the  finish,  and 
it  was  -a  pair  of  very  weary  officers  that  dropped 
limply  from  the  last  two  Albatrosses  and  sat  down 
upon  a  pontoon  to  recover  their  breath.  It  was, 

I  believe,  Lieut.-Commander  L who,  ruefully 

rubbing  down  a  cramp  which  persisted  in  knotting 


110 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


his  left  calf,  declared  that  he  had  just  computed 
that  his  combined  clamberings  in  the  course  of 
the  inspection  were  equal  to  ascending  and  de- 
scending a  mountain  half  a  mile  high. 

Practically  all  of  the  machines  at  Norderney 
were  of  the  tried  and  proven  types — Branden- 
burgs,  Albatrosses,  Frederichafens,  Gothas,  etc.— 
already  well-known  to  the  Allies.  (It  was  not  un- 
til the  great  experimental  station  at  Warnemunde, 
in  the  Baltic,  was  visited  a  fortnight  later  that 
specimens  of  the  latest  types  were  revealed.)  The 
Allied  experts  of  the  party  were  greatly  impressed 
with  the  excellence  of  construction  of  all  of  the 
machines,  none  of  them  appearing  to  have  suf- 
fered in  the  least  as  a  consequence  of  a  shortage 
of  materials.  The  steel  pontoons  in  particular 
—a  branch  of  construction  to  which  the  Germans 
had  given  much  attention,  and  with  notable  suc- 
cess— came  in  for  especially  favourable  comment. 
(The  Commander  of  the  station,  by  the  way, 
showed  us  one  of  these  pontoons  which  he  had 
had  fitted  with  an  engine  and  propeller  and  used 
in  duck-shooting.)  The  general  verdict  seemed 
to  be  that  the  Germans  had  little  to  learn  from 
any  one  in  the  building  of  seaplanes,  and  that 
this  was  principally  due  to  the  fact  that  they  had 
concentrated  upon  it  for  oversea  work,  where 
the  British  had  been  going  in  more  and  more 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      111 

for  swift  "  carrier "  ships  launching  aeroplanes. 
It  was  by  aeroplanes  launched  from  the  "  car- 
rier "  Furious  that  the  great  Zeppelin  station  at 
Tondern  was  practically  destroyed  last  summer, 
and  there  is  no  doubt  that  this  kind  of  a  combina- 
tion can  accomplish  far  more  effective  work — 
providing,  of  course,  that  the  power  using  it  has 
command  of  the  sea — than  anything  that  can  be 
done  by  seaplanes.  It  was  the  fact  that  Germany 
did  not  have  control  of  the  sea,  rather  than  any 
lack  of  ingenuity  or  initiative,  that  pinned  her  to 
the  seaplane,  and,  under  the  circumstances,  it 
has  to  be  admitted  that  she  made  very  creditable 
use  of  the  latter. 

The  one  new  type  of  machine  at  Norderney  (al- 
though the  existence  of  it  had  been  known  to  the 
Allies  for  some  time)  was  the  " giant "  monoplane 
seaboat,  quite  the  most  remarkable  machine  of  the 
kind  in  the  world  at  the  present  time.  Though  its 
span  of  something  like  120  feet  is  less  than  that 
of  a  number  of  great  aeroplanes  already  in  use, 
its  huge  breadth  of  wing  gave  it  a  plane  area  of 
enormous  size.  The  boat  itself  was  as  large — 
and  apparently  as  seaworthty — as  a  good-sized 
steam  launch,  and  so  roomy  that  one  could  al- 
most stand  erect  inside  of  it.  It  quite  dwarfed 
anything  of  the  kind  I  had  ever  seen  before.  Nor 
was  the  boat,  spacious  as  it  was,  the  only  closed-in 


112          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

space.  Twenty  feet  or  more  above  the  deck  of  it, 
between  the  wings,  was  a  large  "box"  contain- 
ing, among  other  things,  u  very  elaborately 
equipped  sound-proof  wireless  room.  The  tech- 
nical instruments  of  control  and  navigation — espe- 
cially the  very  compact  "Gyro"  compasses- 
stirred  the  Allied  experts  to  an  admiration  they 
found  difficult  to  restrain. 

One  of  the  German  officers  who  had  accompanied 
us  from  Wilhelmshaven  told  me  something  of 
the  history  of  this  greatest  of  monoplanes.  i '  This 
flying  boat,"  he  said,  while  we  waited  for  the 
somewhat  lengthy  inspection  to  be  completed, 
"was  the  last  great  gift  that  Count  Zeppelin" 
(he  spoke  the  name  with  an  awe  that  was  almost 
adoration)  "gave  to  his  country  before  he  died. 
He  was  terribly  disappointed  by  the  failure  of 
the  Zeppelin  airship  as  -an  instrument  for  bombing, 
and  the  last  months  of  his  life  were  spent  in  de- 
signing something  to  take  its  place.  He  realized 
that  the  size  of  the  mark  the  airship  offered  to  the 
constantly  improving  anti-aircraft  artillery,  to- 
gether with  the  invention  of  the  explosive  bullet 
and  the  increasing  speed  and  climbing  power  of 
aeroplanes,  put  an  end  for  ever  to  the  use  of 
Zeppelins  where  they  would  be  exposed  to  at- 
tack. He  set  about  to  design  a  heavier-than-air 
machine  that  would  be  powerful  enough  to  carry  a 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      113 

really  great  weight  of  bombs,  and  the  i Giant'  you 
see  here  is  the  result. 

1 '  As  Count  Zeppelin  did  not  believe  that  it  would 
ever  be  possible  to  land  a  machine  of  this  weight 
and  size  on  the  earth,  he  made  it  a  flying  boat. 
But  it  was  not  intended  for  flights  over  water  at 
all  in  the  first  place — that  was  to  be  simply  for 
rising  from  and  landing  in.  It  was  to  be  kept 
at  one  of  our  seaplane  stations  on  the  Belgian 
coast,  as  near  as  possible  to  the  Front,  and  from 
here  it  was  to  go  for  bombing  flights  behind  the 
enemy  lines.  But  before  it  was  completed  ex- 
perience had  proved  that  it  was  quite  practicable 
to  land  big  machines  on  the  earth,  and  so  the 
*  Giant'  found  itself  superseded  as  a  bomber.  It 
was  then  that  it  was  brought  to  the  attention  of  the 
Naval  Flying  Service,  and  we,  recognizing  in  it 
the  possibilities  of  an  ideal  machine  for  long-dis- 
tance reconnaissance,  took  it  over  and  completed 
it.  Now,  although  a  few  changes  have  been  made 
in  the  direction  of  making  it  more  of  a  'sea'  ma- 
chine, it  does  not  differ  greatly  from  the  original 
designs  of  Count  Zeppelin." 

As  to  how  the  machine  had  turned  out  in  prac- 
tice he  was,  naturally,  rather  non-committal.  The 
monoplane,  he  thought,  had  the  advantage  over  a 
biplane  for  sea  use  that  its  wings  were  much 
higher  above  the  water,  and  therefore  much  less 


114 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


likely  to  get  smashed  up  by  heavy  waves.  He 
admitted  that  this  machine  had  proved  extremely 
difficult  to  fly — or  rather  to  land — and  that  it  had 
been  employed  exclusively  for  "  school "  pur- 
poses, for  the  training  of  pilots  to  fly  the  others 
of  the  same  type  that  had  been  building,  Now 
that  the  war  was  over,  he  had  some  doubts  as  to 
whether  these  would  ever  be  completed.  "We 
are  having  to  modify  so  many  of  our  plans,  you 
see,"  he  remarked  naively. 

On  the  fuselage  of  several  of  the  machines  there 
were  evidences  that  signs  or  marks  had  been 
scratched  out  and  painted  over,  and  I  took  it 
that  the  words  or  pictures  so  recently  obliterated 
had  probably  been  of  a  character  calculated  to  be 
offensive  to  the  visiting  Allied  officers.  One  little 
thing  had  been  overlooked,  however,  or  else  left 
because  it  was  in  a  corner  somewhat  removed  from 
the  ebb  and  flow  of  'the  tide  of  inspection.  I  dis- 
covered it  while  passing  along  to  the  machine 
shops  in  the  rear  of  one  of  the  hangars,  and 
later  contrived  to  manoeuvre  myself  back  to  it 
for  a  confirmatory  survey.  It  was  nothing  more 
or  less  than  a  map  of  the  United  States  which  some 
angry  pilot  had  thoroughly  strafed  by  stabbing 
with  a  penknife  blade.  I  was  not  able  to  study 
it  long  enough  to  be  sure  just  what  the  method 
of  the  madness  was,  but — from  the  fact  that  the 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      115 

environs  of  New  York,  Pittsburg,  Philadelphia 
and  Detroit  had  been  literally  pecked  to  pieces — 
it  seemed  possible  that  it  might  have  been  an  at- 
tack on  the  industrial  centres — perhaps  because 
they  were  turning  out  so  much  munitions  for  the 
Allies. 

There  were  two  other  maps  tacked  up  on  the 
same  wall.  One  was  of  Africa,  with  the  ex-Ger- 
man colonies  coloured  red,  with  lighter  shaded 
areas  overflowing  from  them  on  to  British,  Bel- 
gian, French,  and  Portuguese  possessions.  This 
may  have  been  (I  have  since  thought)  a  copy  of 
the  famous  map  of  "Africa  in  1920, "  issued  in 
Germany  early  in  the  war,  but  I  had  no  time  to 
puzzle  out  the  considerable  amount  of  explana- 
tory lettering  on  it.  So  far  as  I  could  see,  this 
map  was  unmarked,  not  even  a  black  mourning 
border  having  been  added. 

The  third  map  was  of  Asia,  and  a  long,  wind- 
ing and  apparently  rather  carefully  made  cut  run- 
ning from  the  north-west  corner  toward  the  centre 
completely  defeated  me  to  account  for.  The  fact 
that  it  ran  through  Asia  Minor,  Northern  Syria, 
and  down  into  Mesopotamia  seemed  to  point  to 
some  connection  with  the  Bagdad  Railway — per- 
haps a  strafe  at  an  enterprise  which,  first  and 
last,  had  deflected  uselessly  so  huge  an  amount 
of  German  money  and  material. 


116 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


The  inspection  over  and  the  terms  of  the  armis- 
tice having  been  found  most  explicitly  carried  out, 
we  returned  to  the  reception  room  of  the  Casino 
for  lunch.  Although  the  Commander  protested 
that  all  arrangements  had  been  made  for  serving 
us  with  mittagessen,  our  senior  officer,  acting  un- 
der orders,  replied  that  we  had  brought  our  own 
food  and  that  this,  with  a  pitcher  of  water,  would 
be  quite  sufficient.  The  water  was  sent,  and  with 
it  two  beautiful  long,  slender  bottles  of  Hock 
which — as  they  were  never  opened — only  served 
to  accentuate  the  flatness  of  the  former. 

We  heard  the  officers  of  the  station  trooping  up 
the  stairs  as  we  unrolled  our  sandwiches,  and 
just  as  we  were  pulling  up  around  the  table  some 
one  threw  open  a  piano  in  the  room  above  our 
heads  and  struck  three  ringing  chords.  '  '  Bang ! ' ' 
— interval — ' i  Bang ! ' ' — interval — '  t  Bang ! ' '  they 
crashed  one  after  the  other,  and  the  throb  of  them 
set  the  windows  rattling  and  the  pictures  (paint- 
ings of  the  station's  fallen  pilots)  swaying  on  the 
wall. 

"Prelude  in  G  flat,"  breathed  Major  N- 
tensely,  as  he  waited  with  eye  alight  and  ear  acock 
for  the  next  notes.     "My  word,  the   chap's   a 
master !" 

But  the  next  chord  was  never  struck.  Instead, 
there  was  a  gruff  order,  the  scrape  of  feet  on  the 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      117 

floor,  and  the  slam  of  a  closed  piano,  followed  by 
the  confused  rumble  of  several  angry  voices  speak- 
ing at  the  same  time.  Then  silence. 

i  '  Looks  like  the  majority  of  our  hosts  don't 
think  *  Inspection  Day's'  quite  the  proper  occasion 
for  tinkling  Kachmaninoff  on  the  ivories,"  ob- 
served Lieutenant-Commander  L ,  U.S.N., 

after  which  he  and  Major  N began  discussing 

plans  for  educating  the  popular  taste  for  "good 
music"  and  the  rest  of  us  fell  to  on  our  sand- 
wiches. 

The  fog — that  all-pervading  East  Frisian  fog 
—which  had  been  thickening  steadily  during  the 
inspection,  settled  down  in  a  solid  bank  while  we 
sat  at  lunch.  With  a  scant  dozen  yards  of  visibil- 
ity, the  Commander  rated  the  prospects  of  cross- 
ing to  the  mainland  so  unfavourable  that  he  sug- 
gested our  remaining  for  the  night  at  one  of  the 
Norderney  hotels  still  open,  and  going  over  to 
Borkum  (which  we  were  planning  to  reach  by  de- 
stroyer) the  next  morning  by  launch.  It  was  the 
difficulty  in  securing  a  prompt  confirmation  of 
what  would  have  been  a  time-saving  change  of 
schedule  which  led  Captain  H —  -  to  reject  the 
plan  and  decide  in  favour  of  making  an  attempt 
to  reach  Norddeich  in,  and  in  spite  of,  the  fog. 
The  Commander  shook  his  head  dubiously.  "My 
men  who  know  the  passage  best  have  left  the  sta- 


118          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

tion,"  he  said;  "but  I  will  do  the  best  I  can  for 
you,  and  perhaps  you  will  have  luck."  He  saw  us 
off  at  the  landing  with  the  same  quiet  courtesy 
with  which  he  had  received  us.  He  was  a  very  lik- 
able chap,  that  Commander ;  perhaps  the  one  indi- 
vidual with  whom  we  were  thrown  into  intimate 
contact  in  the  course  of  the  whole  visit  to  whom 
one  would  have  thought  of  applying  that  term. 

Noticing  that  the  launch  in  which  we  were 
backing  away  from  the  landing  was  at  least  double 
the  size  of  the  one  in  which  we  had  crossed,  I 
asked  one  of  the  German  officers  if  the  greater 
draught  of  it  was  not  likely  to  increase  our  chances 
of  running  aground. 

"Of  course,"  he  replied;  "but  the  larger  cabin 
will  also  be  much  more  comfortable  if  we  have 
to  wait  for  the  next  tide  to  get  off. ' ' 

As  the  launch  swung  slowly  round  in  the  mud- 
and-sand  stained  welter  of  reversed  screws,  I 
bethought  me  of  the  "Biddle"  again,  and  fished  it 
forth  from  my  pocket.  It  was  disappointing  to 
leave  without  having  had  a  glimpse  of  the  town 
where  "Dollmann"  and  his  "rose-brown-cheeked" 
daughter  Clara  had  lived,  but  the  fog  closed  us 
round  in  a  grey-walled  cylinder  scarcely  more  in 
diameter  than  the  launch  was  long.  But  we  were 
right  on  the  course,  I  reflected,  of  the  dinghy 
which  "Davies"  piloted  with  such  consummate 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      119 

skill  through  just  such  a  fog  ("five  yards  or  so  was 
the  radius  of  our  vision,"  wrote  "Carruthers")  to 
Mentmert  to  spy  on  the  conference  at  the  salvage 
plant  on  that  desolate  sand-spit.  I  turned  up  the 
chapter  headed  "Blindfold  to  Memmert,"  and 
read  how,  sounding  with  a  notched  boathook  in  the 
shallows  that  masterly  young  sailor  had  felt  his 
way  across  the  Buse  Tief  to  the  eastern  outlet  of 
the  Memmert  Balje,  the  only  channel  deep  enough 
to  carry  the  dinghy  through  the  half -bared  sand- 
banks between  Juist  and  the  mainland.  Our  own 
problem,  it  seemed  to  me,  was  a  very  similar  one 
to  that  which  confronted  "Davies,"  only,  in  our 
case,  it  was  the  entrance  of  the  channel  where 
the  Buse  Tief  narrowed  between  the  Holies  Riff 
and  the  Itzendorf  Plate  that  had  to  be  located. 
Failing  that,  we  were  destined  to  roost  till  the 
next  tide  on  a  sandbank,  and  that  meant  we  were 
out  for  all  night,  as  there  would  be  no  chance  of 
keeping  to  a  channel,  however  well  marked,  in 
both  fog  and  darkness. 

Ten  minutes  went  by — fifteen — twenty — with 
no  sign  of  the  buoy  which  marked  the  opening  we 
were  trying  to  strike.  Now  the  engines  were 
eased  down  to  quarter-speed,  and  she  lost  way 
just  in  time  to  back  off  from  a  shining  glacis  of 
steel-grey  sand  that  came  creeping  out  of  the  fog. 
For  the  next  ten  minutes,  with  bare  steerage 


120          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

way  on,  she  nosed  cautiously  this  way  and  that, 
like  a  man  groping  for  a  doorway  in  the  dark. 
Then  a  hail  from  the  lookout  on  the  bow  was 
echoed  by  exclamations  of  relief  from  the  Ger- 
man officers.  "Here  is  the  outer  buoy,"  one  of 
them  called  across  to  us  reassuringly;  "the  rest 
of  the  way  is  well  marked  and  easy  to  follow. 
We  will  soon  be  at  Norddeich. ' ' 

Presently  a  fresh  buoy  appeared  as  we  nosed 
on  shoreward,  then  a  second,  and  then  a  third, 
continuing  the  line  of  the  first  two.  Speed  was  in- 
creased to  "half,"  and  the  intervals  of  picking  up 
the  marks  correspondingly  cut  down.  Confident 
that  there  was  nothing  more  to  worry  about,  I 
pulled  out  ' '  The  Riddle ' '  again,  for  I  had  just  re- 
called that  it  was  about  halfway  to  Norddeich,  in 
the  Buse  Tief,  that  "Carruthers"  had  brought  off 
his  crowning  exploit,  the  running  aground  of  the 
tug  and  "invasion"  lighter — with  Von  Brunning, 
Boehme,  and  the  mysterious  "cloaked  passenger" 
— as  they  neared  the  end  of  the  successful  night 
trial  trip  in  the  North  Sea.  Substituting  himself 
for  the  man  at  the  wheel  by  a  ruse,  he  had  edged 
the  tug  over  to  starboard  and  was  just  thinking 
"What  the  Dickens '11  happen  to  her?"  when  the 
end  came;  "a  euthanasia  so  mild  and  gradual 
(for  the  sands  are  fringed  with  mud)  that  the 
disaster  was  on  us  before  I  was  aware  of  it. 


Across  the  Sands  to  Norderney      121 

There  was  just  the  tiniest  premonitory  shudder- 
ing as  our  keel  clove  the  buttery  medium,  a  cascade 
of  ripples  from  either  beam,  and  the  wheel  jammed 
to  rigidity  in  my  hands  as  the  tug  nestled  up  to 
her  final  resting-place." 

And  very  like  that  it  was  with  us.  It  was  a 
guttural  oath  from  somewhere  forward  rather 
than  any  perceptible  jar  that  told  me  the  launch 
had  struck,  and  it  was  not  till  after  the  screw  had 
been  churning  sand  for  half  a  minute  that  there 
was  any  perceptible  heel.  It  had  come  about 
through  one  of  the  buoys  being  missing  and  the 
next  in  line  out  of  place,  one  of  the  Germans 
reckoned;  but  whatever  the  cause,  there  we  were 
—stuck  fast.  Or,  at  least,  we  would  have  been 
with  any  less  resourceful  and  energetic  a  crew. 
If  their  very  lives  had  depended  on  it,  those  four 
or  five  German  seamen  could  not  have  worked 
harder,  nor  to  better  purpose,  to  get  that  launch 
free.  At  the  end  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour  their  in- 
defatigable efforts  were  rewarded,  and  a  half 
hour  later  we  were  settling  ourselves  in  the  warm 
compartment  of  our  waiting  train.  The  Hun 
has  no  proper  sense  of  humour.  Eeverse  the 
roles,  and  any  British  bluejackets  I  have  ever 
known  would  have  run  a  German  Armistice  Com- 
mission on  to  the  first  sandbank  that  hove  in  sight, 
and  damned  the  consequences. 


NORDHOLZ,    THE   DEN    OF   THE    ZEPPELINS 

I  HAVE  written  in  a  previous  chapter  of  the  great 
contrast  observed  between  the  morale  of  the  men 
at  Norderney,  and  the  other  seaplane  stations  vis- 
ited by  parties  from  the  Allied  Naval  Commission, 
and  that  of  those  in  the  remaining  German  war- 
ships, accounting  for  the  difference  by  the  fact 
that  the  former  had  been  kept  busier  than  the  lat- 
ter, and  that  they  had  not  suffered  the  shame  of 
the  "  Great  Surrender "  which  has  cast  a  black, 
unlifting  shadow  upon  the  dregs  of  the  High  Sea 
Fleet.  Whether  the  airships  were  kept  as  busy  as 
the  seaplanes  right  up  to  the  end  it  would  be  dif- 
ficult to  say,  but,  whatever  may  be  the  reason  for 
it,  we  found  the  morale  of  the  great  Zeppelin  sta- 
tions suffered  very  little  if  at  all  in  comparison 
with  that  of  the  working  bases  of  the  naval  heav- 
ier-than-air  machines. 

For  all  the  barbarity  of  many  of  their  raids, 
there  was  splendid  stuff  in  the  officers  and  crews 
of  the  Zeppelins  which  engaged  in  the  campaign 
of  "frightfulness"  against  England,  and  it  is  idle 
to  deny  it.  In  a  better  cause,  or  even  in  worthier 

122 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins 

work  for  an  indifferent  cause,  the  skill  and  cour- 
age repeatedly  displayed  would  have  been  epic. 
Considering  what  these  airships  faced  on  every 
one  of  their  later  raids — what  their  commanders 
and  crews  must  have  known  were  the  odds  against 
them  after  the  night  when  the  destruction  of  the 
first  Zeppelin  over  Cuffley,  in  September,  1916, 
proved  that  the  British  had  effectually  solved  the 
problem  of  igniting  the  hydrogen  of  the  inner  bal- 
lonettes — one  cannot  but  conclude  that  the  morale 
of  the  whole  personnel  must  have  been  very  high 
during  even  this  trying  period.  If  it  had  not  been 
high,  there  would  undoubtedly  have  been  mutinies 
at  the  airship  stations,  such  as  are  known  to  have 
occurred  on  so  many  occasions  among  the  subma- 
rine crews.  Even  in  the  light  of  present  knowl- 
edge, there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that  there  had 
ever  been  serious  trouble  in  getting  Zeppelin 
crews  for  the  most  hazardous  of  raids.  So  far  as 
could  be  gathered  from  our  visits  to  the  great  air- 
ship stations  of  the  North  Sea  littoral,  this  very 
excellent  morale  prevailed  to  the  last;  indeed, 
practically  everything  seen  indicated  that  it  still 
prevails. 

Of  the  several  German  naval  airship  stations 
visited  by  parties  from  the  Allied  Commission, 
the  most  important  were  Althorn,  Nordholz,  and 
Tondern.  The  interest  in  the  latter  was  largely 


124          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

sentimental,  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  practically 
wiped  out  last  summer  as  the  result  of  a  bombing 
raid  by  aeroplanes  launched  from  the  Furious. 
It  was  known  that  little  had  been  done  to  rehabili- 
tate it  as  a  service  station  since  that  time,  and  the 
Commission's  airship  experts'  desire  to  visit  what 
was  left  of  the  sheds  was  actuated  by  a  wish  to  see 
what  damage  had  been  done  rather  than  by  any 
feeling  that  the  station  really  counted  any  longer 
as  a  base  of  Germany's  naval  air  service.  Our 
visit  to  the  ruins  of  Tondern,  and  what  we  learned 
there  of  the  way  it  was  destroyed,  is  a  story  by 
itself,  and  I  will  tell  it  in  a  -separate  chapter. 

Germany  had  very  ambitious  plans  for  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Althorn  station,  and  it  is  prob- 
able at  one  time  that  it  was  intended  that  it  should 
supersede  even  the  mighty  Nordholz  as  the  pre- 
mier home  of  naval  Zeppelins.  If  such  were  really 
the  intention,  however,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it 
was  effectually  put  an  end  to  by  a  great  fire  and 
explosion  which  occurred  there  about  the  middle 
of  last  year,  the  material  destruction  from  which 
—in  sheds  and  Zeppelins — was  vastly  greater  even 
than  that  from  the  British  raid  on  Tondern.  The 
Germans  speak  of  this  disaster  with  a  good  deal 
of  bitterness,  usually  alluding  to  the  cause  as 
" mysterious,"  but  rather  giving  the  impression 
that  they  believe  it  to  have  been  the  work  of 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  125 

' '  Allied  agents. ' '  If  this  is  true,  the  job  will  stand 
as  a  fair  offset  against  any  single  piece  of  work 
of  the  same  character  that  German  agents  perpe- 
trated in  France,  Britain,  or  America.  Only  the 
blowing  up  of  the  great  Russian  national  arsenal 
in  the  second  year  of  the  war  is  comparable  to  it 
for  the  amount  of  material  damage  wrought. 
Althorn  remained  a  station  of  some  importance 
down  to  the  end  of  the  war,  however,  and  that  the 
Germans  still  expected  to  do  important  work  from 
there  was  indicated  by  the  fact  that  one  of  its  new 
sheds  housed  the  great  "L-71,"  the  largest  airship 
in  the  world  at  the  present  time. 

But  it  was  in  the  great  Nordholz  station  that 
the  airship  sub-commission  was  principally  inter- 
ested, not  only  for  what  it  was  at  the  moment — 
incomparably  the  greatest  and  most  modern  of 
German  Zeppelin  aerodromes — but  also  for  what 
had  been  accomplished  from  there  in  the  past,  and 
even  for  what  might  conceivably  be  done  from 
there  in  the  future.  Nordholz  is  a  name  that 
would  have  been  burned  deep  into  the  memories 
of  South  and  East  Coast  Britons  had  it  been 
known  three  years  ago,  as  it  is  now,  that  practi- 
cally all  of  the  Zeppelin  raids  over  England  were 
launched  from  there.  The  popular  idea  at  the 
time — which  even  appears  to  have  persisted  with 
most  Londoners  down  to  the  present — was  that 


126          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

airship  stations  had  been  constructed  in  Belgium, 
and  that  these  alternated  with  those  of  Germany 
in  dispatching  raiders  across  the  North  Sea  to 
England.  A  single  glimpse  of  such  a  station  as 
Nordholz  is  enough  to  show  that  the  huge  amount 
of  labour  and  expense  involved  in  building  even 
a  comparatively  temporary  aerodrome  fit  for  reg- 
ular Zeppelin  work  would  have  been  fatal  to  the 
idea  of  establishing  such  installations  in  Belgium, 
or  anywhere  else  where  Germany  did  not  feel  cer- 
tain of  remaining  in  fairly  permanent  control. 
The  station  at  Jamboli,  in  Bulgaria,  for  instance, 
is  known  to  have  been  able  only  to  dispose  of  one 
or  two  Zeppelins,  and  considerable  intervals  be- 
tween flights  were  imperative  for  keeping  them  in 
trim.  It  would  never  have  been  equal  to  the  strain 
of  steady  raiding. 

There  were  other  German  airship  stations 
within  cruising  distance  of  England,  but  Nordholz 
was  so  much  the  best  equipped,  especially  in  the 
first  years  of  the  war  when  Zeppelin  raiding  was 
the  most  active,  that  the  most  of  the  work,  and 
by  long  odds  the  most  effective  of  it,  was  done 
from  there.  There  were  grim  tales  to  be  told  by 
that  band  of  hard-eyed,  straight-mouthed,  bull- 
necked  pilots — all  that  survived  some  scores  of 
raids  over  England  and  some  hundreds  of  recon- 
naissance flights  over  the  North  Sea — who  re- 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins 

ceived  and  conducted  round  the  Naval  Commission 
party,  though,  unfortunately,  we  did  not  meet 
upon  a  footing  that  made  it  possible  more  than  to 
listen  to  the  account  of  an  occasional  incident 
suggested  by  something  we  were  seeing  at  the 
moment. 

The  route  which  our  party  traversed  from  Wil- 
helmshaven  to  the  Nordholz  airship  station — the 
latter  lies  six  or  eight  miles  south  of  the  Elbe 
estuary  in  the  vicinity  of  Cuxhaven — was  a  differ- 
ent one  from  any  followed  on  our  previous  visits, 
all  of  which  had  taken  us  more  to  the  south  or 
east.  It  was  through  the  same  low-lying,  dyked-in 
country,  however,  where  the  water  difficulty,  un- 
like most  other  parts  of  the  world,  was  one  of 
drainage  rather  than  of  irrigation.  Great  Dutch 
windmills  turned  ponderously  under  the  impulse 
of  the  light  sea-breeze,  as  they  pumped  the  water 
off  the  flooded  land.  Cultivation,  as  in  the  region 
traversed  to  the  south,  was  at  a  standstill,  but 
overflowing  barns — great  capacious  structures 
they  were,  with  brick  walls  and  lofty  thatched 
roofs — proved  that  the  harvest  had  been  a  gener- 
ous one. 

Instead  of  routing  our  two-car  special  over  the 
all-rail  route  via  Bremen,  distance  and  time  were 
saved  by  leaving  it  at  a  small  terminus  opposite 
Bremerhaven,  crossing  to  the  latter  by  tug,  and 


128          To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

proceeding  north  in  more  or  less  direct  line  to  our 
destination.  Little  time  was  lost  in  getting  from 
one  train  to  the  other.  The  tug,  which  had  been 
held  in  readiness  for  our  arrival,  cast  off  as  soon 
as  the  last  of  the  party  had  clambered  over  its  side, 
and  the  short  run  across  the  grey-green  tide  of 
the  estuary  was  made  in  less  than  a  quarter  of  an 
hour.  Four  powerful  army  cars — far  better  ma- 
chines, these,  than  the  dirigible  junk  heaps  we  had 
been  compelled  to  use  at  Wilhelmshaven — were 
waiting  beside  the  slip,  and  another  ten  minutes  of 
what  struck  me  as  very  fast  and  reckless  driving, 
considering  it  was  through  the  main  streets  of  a 
good-sized  city,  brought  us  to  the  station  and  an- 
other two-car  special.  Both  going  and  returning, 
it  was  the  best  "clicking"  lot  of  connections  any 
of  the  parties  made  in  the  course  of  the  whole 
visit,  showing  illuminatingly  what  our  "hosts" 
could  do  in  that  line  when  they  were  minded  to. 
Swift  as  was  our  passage  through  the  streets  of 
Bremerhaven,  there  was  still  opportunity  to  ob- 
serve many  evidences  of  the  vigorous  growth  it 
had  made  the  decade  preceding  the  outbreak  of 
the  war,  and  of  the  plans  that  had  been  made  in 
expectation  of  a  continuation  of  that  growth. 
Blocks  and  blocks  of  imposing  new  buildings— 
now  but  half -tenanted — and  the  nuclei  of  what  had 
been  budding  suburbs  were  more  suggestive  of 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  129 

the  appearance  of  a  Western  American  mush- 
room metropolis  after  the  collapse  of  a  boom  than 
a  town  of  Europe.  The  railway  station — a  fine 
example  of  Germany's  so-called  "New  Art"  archi- 
tecture— in  its  spacious  waiting-rooms,  broad  sub- 
ways, and  commodious  train  sheds  looked  capable 
of  serving  the  city  of  half  a  million  or  so  which 
it  had  confidently  been  expected  the  empire 's  sec- 
ond port  would  become  at  the  end  of  another  few 
years.  As  things  have  turned  out,  Bremerhaven 
will  at  least  have  the  consolation  of  knowing  that 
it  is  not  likely  to  be  troubled  with  "station 
crushes ' '  for  some  decades  to  come. 

The  astonishingly  well-dressed  and  orderly 
crowd  of  a  thousand  or  more  waiting  outside  the 
portal  of  the  station  in  expectation  of  the  arrival 
of  a  train-load  of  returning  soldiers  made  no  un- 
friendly demonstration  of  any  character.  On  the 
contrary,  indeed,  as  at  Wilhelmshaven,  a  number 
of  children  waved  their  hands  as  our  cars  drove 
up,  and  a  goodly  number  of  men  solemnly  bared 
their  heads  as  we  filed  past.  The  special  which 
awaited  us  at  a  platform  reached  after  walking 
through  a  long  vaulted  subway  running  beneath 
the  tracks  consisted,  like  the  one  we  had  left  on 
the  other  side  of  the  river,  of  an  engine  and  two 
cars.  The  rolling  stock  of  this  one  was  in  better 
shape  than  that  of  the  other,  however,  and  with  a 


130 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


better  maintained  road-bed  to  run  over,  the  last 
leg  of  our  journey  was  covered  at  an  average  speed 
of  over  thirty  miles  an  hour,  quite  the  fastest  we 
travelled  by  train  anywhere  in  Germany. 

For  the  most  of  the  way  the  line  continued  run- 
ning through  mile  after  mile  of  water-logged,  sea- 
level  areas  crossed  by  innumerable  drainage  ca- 
nals and  bricked  roadways  gridironing  possible 
inundation  areas  with  their  raised  embankments. 
At  the  end  of  an  hour,  however,  the  patches  of 
standing  water  disappeared,  and  presently  the 
bulk  of  the  great  sheds  of  Nordholz  began  to  notch 
the  northern  skyline,  where  they  stood  crowning 
the  crest  of  the  first  rising  ground  in  the  littoral 
between  the  Dutch  frontier  and  the  Elbe.  With 
only  a  minute  or  two  of  delay  in  the  Nordholz 
yards,  the  train  was  switched  to  the  airship  sta- 
tion's own  spur,  and  at  the  end  of  another  mile 
had  pulled  up  on  a  siding  directly  opposite  the 
main  entrance. 

The  commander  of  the  station,  with  two  or 
three  other  officers,  was  waiting  to  receive  us  as 
we  stepped  out  on  the  ground.  Eanged  up  along- 
side this  row  of  heel-clicking,  frock-coated,  be- 
medalled  and  be-sworded  Zeppelin  officers  was  an 
ancient  individual  of  a  type  which  seemed  to  re- 
call the  fatherly  old  Jehus  of  the  piping  days  of 
Oberammergau.  Every  time  the  officers  saluted, 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins 


131 


he  raised  his  hat,  bowed  low  from  the  waist,  and 
exclaimed,  "Good  morning  to  you,  gentlemen. " 
When  the  last  of  us  had  been  thus  greeted,  he 
called  out  a  comprehensive,  ' l  This  way  to  the  car- 
riages, gentlemen,"  and  trotted  off  ahead,  bell- 
wether fashion,  through  the  gate. 

Here  we  found  waiting  four  small  brakes  and 
a  diminutive  automobile,  the  sum  total  of  the  sta- 
tion's resources  in  rapid  transit,  according  to  the 
commander.  Getting  into  the  motor  to  precede 
us  as  pilot,  he  asked  the  party  to  dispose  itself  as 
best  it  could  in  the  horse-drawn  vehicles.  Then, 
with  old  "Jehu"  holding  the  reins  of  the  first 
vehicle  and  men  in  air-service  uniform — utter 
strangers  to  horses  they  were,  too — tooling  the 
other  three,  we  started  off  along  a  well-paved  road. 

A  long  row  of  very  attractive  red  brick-and-tile 
houses  of  agreeably  varied  design  were  apparently 
the  homes  of  married  officers.  Our  way  led  past 
only  the  first  five  or  six  of  them,  but  a  stirring  of 
lace  curtains  in  every  one  of  these  told  that  we 
were  running  the  gauntlet  of  hostile  glances  all  the 
way.  One  glowering  Frau — though  in  the  semi- 
negligee  of  a "  Made-in-Germany ' '  kimono  of  pale 
mauve,  her  Brunhildian  brow  was  crowned  with  a 
"permanently  Marcelled"  coiffure  of  the  kind  one 
sees  in  hairdressers'  windows — disdained  all 
cover,  and  so  stepped  out  upon  her  veranda  just 


132          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

in  time  to  see  the  elder  of  her  blonde-braided  off- 
spring in  the  act  of  waving  a  Teddy  Bear — or  it 
may  have  been  a  woolly  lamb  or  a  dachshund— 
at  the  tail  of  the  procession  of  invading  Eng- 
Idnders.  She  was  swooping — a  mauve-tailed 
comet  with  a  Gorgon  head — on  the  luckless  "fra- 
ternisatress "  as  my  brake  turned  a  corner  and 
the  loom  of  a  block  of  barracks  shut  "The  Row" 
from  sight,  but  a  series  of  shrill  squeals,  piercing 
through  the  raucous  grind  of  steel  tyres  on 
asphalt  pavement,  told  that  punishment  swift  and 
terrible  was  being  meted  out. 

"More  activity  there  than  I  saw  in  all  of 
Bremerhaven,"  laconically  observed  the  Yankee 
Ensign  sitting  next  me.  "Who  said  the  German 
woman  was  lacking  in  temperament?" 

Driving  through  the  barracks  area — where  all 
the  men  in  sight  invariably  saluted  or  stood  at 
attention  as  we  passed — and  down  an  avenue  be- 
tween small  but  thickly  set  pines,  the  road  de- 
bouched into  the  open,  and  for  the  first  time  we 
saw  all  the  sheds  of  the  great  station  at  compara- 
tively close  range.  Then  we  were  in  a  position 
to  understand  with  what  care  the  site  had  been 
chosen  and  laid  out.  Occupying  the  only  rising 
ground  near  the  coast  south  of  the  Kiel  Canal,  it 
is  quite  free  from  the  constant  inundations  which 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  133 

iten  the  alluvial  plain  along  the  sea.  The 
sheds  are  visible  from  a  great  distance,  but  it  is 
only  when  one  draws  near  them  that  their  truly 
gigantic  size  becomes  evident.  Of  modern  build- 
ings of  utility,  such  as  factories  and  exhibition 
structures,  I  do  not  recall  one  that  is  so  impressive 
as  these  in  sheer  immensity.  Yet  the  proportions 
of  the  sheds  are  so  good  that  constant  comparison 
with  some  familiar  object  of  known  size,  such  as 
a  man,  alone  puts  them  in  their  proper  perspec- 
tive. 

The  sheds  are  built  in  pairs,  standing  side  by 
side,  and  on  a  plan  which  has  brought  each  pair 
on  the  circumference  of  a  circle  two  kilometres  in 
diameter.  The  chord  of  the  arc  drawn  from  one 
pair  of  sheds  to  the  next  in  sequence  is  a  kilo- 
metre in  length,  while  the  same  distance  separates 
each  pair  on  the  circumference  from  the  huge  re- 
volving shed  in  the  centre  of  the  circle.  The 
whole  plan  has  something  of  the  mystic  symmetry 
of  an  ancient,  temple  of  the  sun.  Of  the  half- 
dozen  pairs  of  sheds  necessary  to  complete  the 
circle,  four  had  been  constructed  and  were  in  use. 
Each  shed  was  built  to  house  two  airships,  or 
four  for  the  pair.  This  gave  a  capacity  of  sixteen 
Zeppelins  for  the  four  pairs  of  sheds,  while  the 
two  housed  in  the  revolving  shed  in  the  centre 


134          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

brought  the  total  capacity  of  the  station  up  to 
eighteen — a  larger  number,  I  believe,  than  were 
ever  over  England  at  one  time. 

Scarcely  less  impressive  than  the  immensity  of 
the  sheds  and  the  broad  conception  of  the  general 
plan  of  the  station  was  the  solidity  of  construction. 
Everything,  from  the  quarters  of  the  men  and  the 
officers  to  the  hangars  themselves,  seemed  built 
for  all  time,  and  to  play  its  part  in  the  fulfilment 
of  some  far-reaching  plan.  Costly  and  scarce  as 
asphalt  must  have  been  in  Germany,  the  many 
miles  of  roads  connecting  the  various  sheds  were 
laid  deep  with  it,  and,  as  I  had  a  chance  to  see 
where  repairs  were  going  on,  on  a  heavy  base  of 
concrete.  The  sheds  were  steel-framed,  concrete- 
floored,  and  with  pressed  asbestos  sheet  figuring 
extensively  in  their  sides.  All  the  daylight  ad- 
mitted (as,  we  saw  presently)  filtered  through 
great  panes  of  yellow  glass  in  the  roof,  shutting 
out  the  ultra-violet  rays  of  the  sun,  which  had 
been  found  to  cause  airship  fabric  to  deteriorate 
rapidly. 

The  barracks  of  the  men  were  of  brick  and  con- 
crete, and  were  built  with  no  less  regard  for  ap- 
pearance than  utility.  So,  too,  the  officers '  quar- 
ters and  the  Casino,  and  the  large  and  comfort- 
able-looking houses  for  married  officers  I  have 
already  mentioned.  All  had  been  built  very  re- 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  135 

cently,  many  in  the  by  no  means  uneff  ective  ' '  New 


Art"  style,  to  the  simple  solidity  of  which  the 
Germans  seemed  to  have  turned  in  reaction  from 
the  Gothic.  Beyond  all  doubt  Germany  was  plan- 
ning years  ahead  with  Nordholz,  both  as  to  war 
and  peace  service.  They  were  quite  frank  in 
speaking  of  the  ambitions  they  still  have  in  re- 
spect of  the  latter,  and  (from  casual  remarks 
dropped  once  or  twice  by  officers)  I  should  be  very 
much  surprised  if  their  plans  for  developing  the 
Zeppelin  as  a  super-war  machine  have  been  en- 
tirely shelved. 

The  road  along  which  we  drove  to  reach  the 
first  pair  of  sheds  to  be  visited  ran  through  ex- 
tensive plantations  of  scraggly  screw-pine,  which 
appear  to  have  been  set — before  the  site  was 
chosen  for  an  air  station — for  the  purpose  of  bind- 
ing together  the  loose  soil  and  preventing  its 
shifting  in  the  heavy  winds.  Wherever  the  trees 
had  encroached  too  closely  upon  the  hangars,  the 
plantations  had  been  burned  off.  Over  one  con- 
siderable area  the  accumulations  of  ash  in  the  de- 
pressions showed  the  destruction  to  have  been 
comparatively  recent,  and  this  I  learned  had  been 
burned  over,  in  the  panic  which  followed  the  blow- 
ing up  of  the  Tondern  sheds  by  British  bombing 
machines  last  summer,  in  order  to  minimize  the 
risk  from  the  raid  which  Nordholz  itself  never 


136 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules1 


ceased  to  expect  right  down  to  the  day  of  the 
armistice. 

The  staggering  size  of  the  great  sheds  became 
more  and  more  impressive  as  we  drew  nearer,  and 
when  the  procession  finally  turned  and  went  clat- 
tering down  the  roadway  between  one  of  the  pairs, 
the  towering  walls  to  left  and  right  blotted  out  the 
sky  like  the  cliffs  of  a  rocky  canon.  Halfway 
through  this  great  defile  the  officers  of  the  station 
were  waiting  to  receive  and  conduct  us  round.  A 
hard,  fit,  capable-looking  lot  of  chaps  they  were. 
Every  one  of  them  had  at  least  one  decoration, 
most  of  them  many,  and  among  these  were  two  or 
three  Orders  Pour  de  Merite,  the  German  V.O. 
One  at  least  of  them — the  great  long-distance 
pilot,  Von  Butlar — was  famous  internationally, 
and  few  among  the  senior  of  them  (as  I  was  as- 
sured shortly)  but  had  been  over  England  more 
than  once.  They  were  the  best  of  Germany's  sur- 
viving Zeppelin  pilots,  and  one  was  interested  to 
compare  the  type  with  that  of  the  pick  of  her  sea- 
pilots  as  we  had  seen  them  at  Norderney. 

Running  my  eye  round  their  faces  as  the  min- 
gled parties  began  moving  slowly  toward  the  side 
door  of  the  first  shed  to  be  inspected,  I  recog- 
nized at  once  in  these  Zeppelin  officers  the  same 
hard,  cold,  steady  eyes,  the  same  aggressive  jaw, 
and  the  same  wide,  thin-lipped  mouth  that  had 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  137 

predominated  right  through  the  officers  we  had 
met  at  Norderney.  These,  I  should  say,  are  char- 
acteristic of  the  great  majority  of  the  outstanding 
men  of  both  of  Germany's  air  services.  The 
steady  eye  and  the  firm  jaw  are,  indeed,  charac- 
teristic of  most  successful  flying  men,  but  it  is  the 
4 'hardness/'  not  to  say  cruelty,  of  the  mouth  which 
differentiates  the  German  from  the  high-spirited, 
devil-may-care  air-warrior  of  England  and  Amer- 
ica. 

These  Zeppelin  pilots  seemed  to  me  to  run 
nearer  to  the  German  naval  officer  type  than  did 
the  seaplane  officers.  The  latter  were  nearly  al- 
ways slender  of  body,  wiry  and  light  of  foot,  where 
(though  there  were  several  exceptions,  including 
the  great  Von  Butlar)  the  former  were  mainly  of 
generous  girth,  with  the  typical  German  bull  neck 
corrugating  into  rolls  of  fat  above  the  backs  of 
their  collars.  A  Major  of  the  E.A.F.,  who  had 
been  walking  at  my  side  and  doing  a  bit  of  ' '  sizing 
up "  on  his  own  account,  put  the  difference  rather 
well  when  he  said,  as  we  waited  our  turn  to  pass 
in  through  the  small  side  door  of  the  great  grey 
wall  of  the  shed:  "If  I  was  taking  temporary 
refuge  in  a  hospital,  convent,  or  orphan  asylum 
during  a  German  air  raid,  I'd  feel  a  lot  better 
about  it  if  I  knew  that  it  was  some  of  those  sea- 
plane chaps  flying  overhead  rather  than  some  of 


138 


To  Kiel  in  the  "Hercules" 


this  batch.  That  thick-set  one  there,  with  the  cast 
in  his  eye  and  the  corded  neck,  has  a  face  that 
wouldn't  need  much  make-up  for  the  Hun  villain 
in  a  Lyceum  melodrama.  Yes,  I'm  sure  these 
Zepp.  drivers  will  average  a  jolly  lot  'Hunnier' 
than  the  run  of  their  seaplane  men." 

Up  to  that  moment  my  experience  of  German 
airships  had  been  limited  to  the  view  of  them  as 
slender  silver  pencils  of  light  gliding  swiftly 
across  the  searchlight-slashed  skies  of  London, 
and  three  or  four  inspections  of  the  tangled 
masses  of  aluminium  and  charred  wood  which  re- 
mained when  ill-starred  raiders  had  paid  the  su- 
preme penalty.  I  was  indebted  to  the  Zeppelins 
for  a  number  of  thrills,  but  only  two  or  three  of 
them  (and  one  was  in  the  form  of  a  bomb  which 
gave  me  a  shower  bath  of  plate  glass  in  Kings- 
way)  were  comparable  to  the  sheer  wave  of  amaze- 
ment which  swept  over  me  when,  having  passed 
from  the  cold  grey  light  of  the  winter  morning 
into  the  warm  golden  glow  of  the  interior  of  the 
big  shed  to  which  we  had  come,  I  looked  up  and 
beheld  the  towering  loom  of  the  starboard  side  of 
"L-68,"  with  the  sweeping  lines  of  her,  fining  to 
points  at  both  ends,  exaggerating  monstrously  a 
length  which  was  sufficiently  startling  even  when 
expressed  in  figures.  The  secret  of  the  hold  which 
the  Zeppelin  had  for  so  long  on  the  imagination  of 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  139 

the  German  people  was  not  hard  for  me  to  under- 
stand after  that.  It  was  easy  to  see  how  they 
could  have  been  led  to  believe  that  it  could  lay 
Paris  and  London  in  ruins,  and  that  the  very  sight 
of  it  would  in  time  cause  the  enemies  of  their  coun- 
try to  sue  for  peace.  One  saw,  too,  how  hard  it 
must  have  been  for  them  finally  to  believe  that 
the  Zeppelin  had  been  mastered  by  the  aeroplane, 
and  that  the  high  hopes  they  had  built  upon  it  had 
really  crashed  with  the  fallen  raiders. 

There  were  two  Zeppelins  in  the  shed  we  had 
entered — "L-68"  and  another  monster  of  practi- 
cally the  same  size.  The  former,  with  great  ir- 
regularly shaped  strips  of  fabric  dangling  all 
along  its  under  side,  suggested  a  gigantic  shark 
in  process  of  being  ripped  up  the  belly  for  skin- 
ning. Being  deflated,  the  weight  of  its  frame  was 
supported  by  a  number  of  heavy  wooden  props 
evenly  distributed  along  either  side  from  end  to 
end.  Its  mate,  on  the  other  hand,  being  full  of 
hydrogen  and  practically  ready  for  flight,  had  to 
be  prevented  from  rising  and  bumping  against  the 
yellow  skylights  by  a  series  of  light  cables,  the 
upper  ends  of  which  were  attached  at  regular  in- 
tervals along  both  sides  of  the  framework,  while 
below  they  were  made  fast  to  heavy  steel  shoes 
which  ran  in  grooves  set  in  the  concrete  floor. 
The  latter  contrivance — especially  an  arrange- 


140          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ment  for  the  instant  slipping  of  the  cable — was 
very  cleverly  devised  and  greatly  interested  the 
Allied  experts. 

There  were  two  or  three  things  the  popular 
mind  had  credited  the  modern  Zeppelin  with  em- 
bodying which  we  did  not  find  in  these  latest  ex- 
amples of  German  airship  development.  One  of 
these  was  an  "  anti-bomb  protector "  on  the  top, 
something  after  the  style  of  the  steel  nets  erected 
over  London  banks  and  theatres  for  the  purpose 
of  detonating  dropped  explosives  before  they  pen- 
etrated the  roof.  The  fact  that  attempts  to  de- 
stroy Zeppelins  by  bomb  had  invariably — with  the 
exception  of  the  one  brought  down  by  Warneford 
in  Belgium  in  1915 — resulted  in  failure,  was  doubt- 
less largely  responsible  for  this  belief  in  the  exist- 
ence of  a  protecting  net,  whereas  the  reason  for 
those  failures  is  probably  to  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  only  about  one  bomb  in  a  hundred  will  find 
enough  resistance  in  striking  an  airship  to  deto- 
nate. At  any  rate,  there  were  no  indications 
that  either  the  earlier  or  later  Zeppelins  we  saw 
had  ever  been  protected  in  this  way.  Indeed,  we 
did  not  even  seen  a  single  one  of  the  machine-guns, 
which  every  one  had  taken  for  granted  were 
mounted  on  top  of  all  Zeppelins  to  resist  aeroplane 
attack,  though  these,  of  course,  with  their  plat- 
forms, may  well  have  been  removed  in  the  course 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins 


141 


of  the  disarmament  imposed  by  the  armistice 
terms. 

Nor  had  these  late  airships  the  bright  golden 
colour  of  those  that  one  saw  over  London  in  the 
earlier  raids.  That  the  refulgent  tawniness  of 
them  was  not  due  entirely  to  the  reflected  beams  of 
the  searchlights  was  proved  by  the  uncharred 
fragments  of  fabric  one  had  picked  up  at  Cuffley 
and  Potters '  Bar.  But  the  German  designers  had 
been  giving  a  good  deal  of  study  to  invisibility, 
since  that  time,  with  the  result  that  these  new 
airships  were  coloured  over  all  their  exposed  sur- 
faces a  dull  slaty  black  that  would  hardly  reflect 
a  beam  of  bright  sunshine. 

The  cars,  which  were  both  smaller  and  lighter 
than  those  from  the  airships  brought  down  in 
England,  were  all  underslung,  and  none  of  them 
was  enclosed  in  the  framework,  as  had  often  been 
stated.  Even  these  were  not  built  entirely  of 
metal,  heavy  fabric  being  used  to  close  up  all 
spaces  where  strength  was  not  required.  The 
bomb-dropping  devices  had  been  removed,  but  the 
numbered  ' '  switchboard "  in  the  rearmost  car, 
from  which  they  could  be  released,  still  remained. 
The  cars,  free  from  every  kind  of  protuberance 
that  could  meet  the  resistance  of  the  air,  were  ef- 
fectively 'and  gracefully  "  stream-lined. ' '  The 
framework  and  bodies  of  the  cars  were  made  of 


142          To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

the  light  but  strong  "duraluminum"  alloy,  which 
the  Germans  have  spent  many  years  in  perfecting 
for  this  purpose.  A  small  fragment  of  strut 
which  I  picked  up  under  "L-68"  has  proved,  on 
comparison,  considerably  lighter  in  specific  grav- 
ity than  similar  pieces  from  three  of  the  Zeppelins 
brought  down  early  in  the  war.  Indeed,  in  spite 
of  its  admixture  of  heavier  metals  for  "  stiff  en- 
ing,  "  the  latest  alloy  seems  scarcely  heavier  than 
aluminum  itself. 

The  inspection  of  an  airship  to  see  that  it  had 
been  disarmed  according  to  the  provisions  of  the 
armistice  was,  as  may  be  imagined,  rather  more 
of  a  job  than  a  similar  inspection  of  even  a 
"giant"  seaplane.  In  a  Zeppelin  that  is  more 
or  less  the  same  size  as  the  Mauretania  the  dis- 
tances are  magnificent,  and  while  most  of  the  in- 
spection was  confined  to  the  cars,  that  of  the  wire- 
less, with  a  search  for  possible  concealed  machine- 
gun  mountings,  involved  not  a  little  climbing  and 
clambering.  One's  first  sight  of  the  interior  of 
a  deflated  Zeppelin — in  an  inflated  one  the  bulging 
ballonettes  obstruct  the  view  considerably — is 
quite  as  impressive  in  its  way  as  the  premier  sur- 
vey of  it  from  the  outside.  No  'tween  decks  pros- 
pect in  the  largest  ship  afloat,  cut  down  as  it  is  by 
bulkheads,  offers  a  fifth  of  the  unbroken  sweep  of 
vision  that  one  finds  opened  before  him  as  he 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  143 

climbs  up  inside  the  tail  of  a  modern  airship.  Al- 
though airy  ladders  and  soaring  lengths  of  frame- 
work intervene,  they  are  no  more  than  lace-work 
fretting  the  vast  space,  and  the  eye  roams  free  to 
where  the  side-braces  of  the  narrow  "walk"  seem 
to  run  together  in  the  nose.  Only,  so  consummate 
the  illusion  wrought  on  the  eye  and  brain  by  the 
strange  perspective,  that  " meeting  point "  seems 
more  like  six  hundred  miles  away  than  six  hundred 
feet.  The  effect  is  more  like  looking  to  the  end  of 
the  universe  than  to  the  end  of  a  Zeppelin.  No 
illusion  ever  devised  on  the  stage  to  give  "dis- 
tance" to  a  scene  could  be  half  so  convincing. 
All  that  was  "cosmic"  in  you  vibrated  in  sympa- 
thy, and  it  took  but  a  shake  of  the  reins  of  the 
imagination  to  fancy  yourself  tripping  off  down 
that  unending  "Koad  to  Anywhere"  to  the  music 
of  the  Spheres.  You— 

"Gee,  but  ain't  that  a  peach  of  a  little  'Gyro'?" 
filtering  up  through  the  fabric  beneath  my  feet 
awakened  me  to  the  fact  that  the  inspection  of 
"L-68"  having  reached  the  rearmost  car,  was 
near  its  finish.  Clambering  back  to  earth,  I  found 
the  party  just  reassembling  to  go  to  the  carriages 
for  the  drive  to  the  great  revolving  shed,  which 
was  the  next  to  be  visited. 

Its  central  revolving  shed  is  perhaps  the  most 
arresting  feature  of  the  Nordholz  station.  It  is 


144 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules'' 


built  on  the  lines  of  a  "twin"  engine  turntable, 
with  each  track  housed  over,  and  with  every  di- 
mension multiplied  twenty-five  or  thirty-fold. 
The  turning  track  is  laid  in  a  bowl-shaped  depres- 
sion about  ten  feet  deep  and  seven  hundred  feet 
in  diameter.  The  floors  of  both  sheds  (which 
stand  side  by  side,  with  only  a  few  feet  between) 
are  flush  with  the  level  of  the  ground,  so  that  the 
airships  they  house  may  be  run  out  and  in  with- 
out a  jolt.  The  turning  mechanism,  which  is  in 
the  rear  of  the  sheds  and  revolves  with  them,  is 
entirely  driven  by  electricity.  The  shifting  of  a 
lever  sets  the  whole  great  mass  in  motion,  and 
stops  it  to  a  millimetre  of  the  point  desired,  the 
later  being  indicated  on  a  dial  by  a  needle  showing 
the  direction  of  the  wind. 

The  Germans  assured  us — and  on  this  point  the 
British  and  American  airship  experts  were  in  full 
agreement  with  them — that  the  revolving  shed  is 
absolutely  the  ideal  installation,  as  it  makes  it 
possible  to  launch  or  house  a  ship  directly  into 
the  wind,  and  so  allows  them  to  be  used  on  days 
when  it  would  be  out  of  the  question  to  launch 
them  from,  or  return  them  to,  an  ordinary  hangar. 
The  one  point  against  it  seems  to  be  its  almost  pro- 
hibitive cost.  This  central  shed  at  Nordholz  was 
designed  some  time  before  the  war,  and  was  com- 
pleted a  year  or  so  after  its  outbreak.  The  Ger- 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  145 

mans  did  not  tell  what  it  had  cost,  but  they  did 
say  that  the  latter  was  so  great — both  in  money 
and  in  steel  deflected  from  other  uses — that  they 
had  not  contemplated  the  building  of  another  dur- 
ing the  continuance  of  the  war. 

Another  interesting  admission  of  a  Zeppelin  of- 
ficer at  Nordholz  was  to  the  effect  that  one  of  their 
greatest  difficulties  had  arisen  through  the  fact 
that  it  had  been  found  practicable  and  desirable  to 
increase  the  size  of  airships  far  more  rapidly  than 
had  been  contemplated  when  most  of  the  existing 
sheds  were  designed.  Thus  many  hangars — even 
at  Nordholz,  where  practice  was  most  advanced — 
had  become  almost  useless  for  housing  the  latest 
Zeppelins.  The  proof  of  this  was  seen  at  one  of 
the  older  sheds  which  we  visited,  where  both  of  the 
airships  it  contained  had  been  cut  off  fore  and  aft 
to  reduce  their  lengths  sufficiently  to  allow  them 
inside.  Thirty  or  forty  feet  of  the  framework  of 
the  bows  and  sterns  of  each,  stripped  of  their 
covering  fabric,  were  standing  in  the  corners. 
They  assured  us  that  while  an  airship  thus 
"  bobbed "  at  both  ends  was  not  necessarily  con- 
sidered out  of  commission,  it  would  take  several 
days  of  rush  work  to  get  it  ready  for  flight,  and 
that  during  most  of  this  time  sixty  to  eighty  feet 
of  it — the  combined  length  of  the  nose  and  tail 
which  had  to  be  cut  off  to  bring  it  inside — would 


146 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


have  to  remain  sticking  out,  exposed  to  the 
weather. 

To  any  one  who,  like  myself,  was  not  an  airship 
expert,  but  had  been  "among  those  present"  at 
a  number  of  the  earlier  raids  on  London,  the  last 
shed  visited  was  the  most  interesting  of  all,  for  it 
contained  what  is  in  many  respects  Germany's 
most  historic  Zeppelin,  the  famous  "L-14." 
Twenty-four  bombing  flights  over  England  were 
claimed  for  this  remarkable  veteran,  besides  many 
scores  of  reconnaissance  voyages.  All  of  the  sur- 
viving pilots  appeared  to  have  an  abiding  belief 
in  her  invulnerability — a  not  unnatural  attitude 
of  the  fatalist  toward  an  instrument  which  has 
succeeded  in  defying  fate.  This  is  the  way  one  of 
them  expressed  it,  who  came  and  stood  by  my  side 
during  the  quarter-hour  in  which  the  inspecting 
officers  were  climbing  about  inside  the  glistening 
yellow  shell  of  the  historic  raider  in  an  endeavour 
to  satisfy  themselves,  that  she  was,  temporarily 
at  least,  incapable  of  further  activities  :— 

"It  will  sound  strange  to  you  to  hear  me  say 
it,"  he  said,  "but  it  is  a  fact  that  all  of  the  officers 
and  men  at  Nordholz  firmly  believed  that  I>-14 
could  not  be  destroyed.  Always  we  gave  her  the 
place  of  honour  in  starting  first  away  for  Eng- 
land, and  most  times  she  was  the  last  to  come  back 
— of  those  that  did  come  back.  After  a  while,  no 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  147 

matter  how  long  she  was  late,  we  always  said, '  Oh, 
but  it  is  old  L-14 ;  no  use  to  worry  about  her ;  she 
will  come  home  at  her  own  time. '  And  come  home 
she  always  did.  All  of  our  greatest  pilots  flew  in 
her  at  one  time  or  another  and  came  back  safe. 
Then  they  were  given  newer  and  faster  ships,  and 
sometimes  they  came  home,  and  sometimes  they 

did  not. ,  who  was  experimenting  with  one 

of  the  smaller  swift  types  of  half-rigids  when  it 
was  brought  down  north  of  London — the  first  to 
be  destroyed  over  England — had  flown  L-14  many 

times,  and  come  home  safe,  and  so  had ,  our 

greatest  pilot,  who  was  also  lost  north  of  London, 
very  near  where  the  other  was  brought  down,  and 
where  we  think  you  had  some  kind  of  trap.  L-14 
saw  these  and  many  other  Zeppelins  fall  in  flames 
and  the  more  times  she  came  home  the  more  was 
our  belief  in  her  strength.  The  pilot  who  flew  her 
was  supposed  to  take  more  chances  (because  she 
really  ran  no  risks,  you  see),  and  if  you  have  ever 
read  of  how  one  Zeppelin  in  each  raid  always 
swooped  low  to  drop  her  bombs,  you  now  know 
that  she  was  that  one.  Because  we  had  this  super- 
stitious feeling  about  her  we  were  very  careful 
that,  in  rebuilding  and  repairing  her,  much  of  her 
original  material  should  be  left,  so  that  whatever 
gave  her  her  charmed  life  should  not  be  removed. 
Although  our  duraluminum  of  the  present  is  much 


148          To  Kiel  in  the  "Hercules" 

lighter  and  stronger  than  the  first  we  made,  L-14 
still  has  most  of  her  original  framework ;  and,  al- 
though improved  technical  instruments  have  been 
installed,  all  her  cars  are  much  as  when  she  was 
built.  You  will  see  how  much  clumsier  and  heav- 
ier they  are  than  those  of  the  newer  types.  And 
now,  for  some  months,  we  have  used  L-14  as  a 
'school'  ship,  in  which  to  train  our  young  pilots. 
You  see,  her  great  traditions  must  prove  a  won- 
derful inspiration  to  them." 

A  few  minutes  later  I  had  a  hint  of  one  type  of 
this  " inspiration, "  when  a  pilot  (who  had  fallen 
into  step  with  me  as  we  took  a  turn  across  the 
fields  on  foot  to  see  the  hangars  of  the  "protect- 
ing flight "  of  aeroplanes)  mentioned  that  he  had 
taken  part  in  a  number  of  the  1916  raids  over  the 
Midland  industrial  centres.  Knowing  the  Stygian 
blackness  in  which  this  region  was  wrapped  dur- 
ing all  of  the  Zeppelin  raiding  time,  I  asked  him 
if  he  had  not  found  it  difficult  to  locate  his  objec- 
tives in  a  country  which  was  plunged  in  complete 
darkness. 

"Not  so  difficult  as  you  might  think,"  was  the 
reply.  "There  were  always  the  rivers  and  ca- 
nals, which  we  knew  perfectly  from  careful  study. 
Besides,  a  town  is  a  very  large  mark,  and  you 
seem  to  ' sense'  the  nearness  of  great  masses  of 
people,  anyhow.  Perhaps  the  great  anxiety  they 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  149 

are  in  establishes  a  sort  of  mental  contact  with 
you,  whose  brain  is  very  tense  and  receptive. 
Effective  bombing  is  very  largely  a  matter  of  psy- 
chology, you  see." 

I  saw.  Indeed,  I  think  I  saw  rather  more  than 
he  intended  to  convey. 

The  inspection  over  and  everything  having  been 
found  as  stipulated  in  the  armistice,  we  were  con- 
ducted to  the  Officers'  Casino  for  lunch.  Each 
member  of  the  party,  as  had  been  the  practice 
from  the  outset,  having  brought  a  package  of 
sandwiches  from  the  ship  in  his  pocket,  it  was 
intimated  to  the  Commander  of  the  station  that 
we  would  not  need  to  trouble  him  to  have  the 
luncheon  served,  which  he  said  had  been  pre- 
pared for  us.  The  same  situation  had  arisen  at 
Norderney  and  several  other  of  the  stations  pre- 
viously visited,  and  in  each  of  these  instances  our 
" hosts"  of  the  day  had  acquiesced  in  the  plainly 
expressed  desire  of  the  senior  officer  of  the  party 
that  we  should  confine  our  menu  to  what  we  car- 
ried in  our  own  "  nose-bags. "  Nordholz,  how- 
ever— quite  possibly  with  no  more  than  an  en- 
larged idea  of  what  were  its  duties  under  the  cir- 
cumstances— was  not  to  be  denied.  A  couple  of 
plates  of  very  appetizing  German  red-cabbage 
sauerkraut,  with  slices  of  ham  and  blood  sausage, 
were  waiting  upon  a  large  sidetable  as  we  entered 


150          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

the  reception-room,  and  to  these,  as  fast  as  a  very 
nervous  waiter  could  bring  them  in,  were  added 
the  following:  a  large  loaf  of  pumpernickel,  a 
pitcher  of  chicken  consomme,  a  huge  beefsteak, 
with  a  fried  egg  sitting  in  the  middle  of  it,  for  each 
member  of  the  party,  two  dishes  of  apple  sauce, 
and  eight  bottles  of  wine — four  of  white  and  four 
of  red.  The  steaks — an  inch  thick,  six  inches  in 
diameter,  and  grilled  to  a  turn — were  quite  the 
largest  pieces  of  meat  I  had  seen  served  outside 
of  Ireland  since  the  war.  The  hock  bore  the  label 
"  Diirkheimer,"  and  the  other  bottles,  which  were 
of  non-German  origin,  "Ungarischer  Rotwein." 
"Although  I'd  hate  to  hurt  their  feelings/7  said 
the  senior  officer  of  the  party,  surveying  the  Gar- 
gantuan repast  with  a  perplexed  smile,  "I  should 
like  to  confine  myself  to  my  sandwiches  and  leave 
a  note  asking  them  to  forward  this  to  some  of  our 
starving  prisoners.  Since  we've  been  feeding 
their  pilots  and  commissioners  in  the  Hercules, 
however,  I  suppose  there's  no  valid  reason  why 
we  should  hesitate  to  partake  of  this  banquet. 
I'll  leave  you  free  to  decide  for  yourselves  what 
you  want  to  do  on  that  score. ' '  We  did.  It  was 
the  American  Ensign  who,  smacking  his  lips  over 
the  last  of  his  steak,  pronounced  it  the  best  "hunk 
of  cow"  he  had  had  since  he  was  at  a  Mexican 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  151 

barbecue  at  Coronado ;  but  it  was  the  General  who 
had  a  second  helping  of  apple  sauce,  and  won- 
dered how  they  made  it  so  "  smooth  and  free  from 
lumps, "  and  what  it  was  they  put  in  it  to  give  that 
"very  delicate  flavour." 

Hung  around  all  four  walls  of  the  room  were 
perhaps  a  dozen  oil  paintings  of  flying  officers  in 
uniform,  and  although  they  bore  no  names,  we 
knew  (from  what  had  been  told  us  of  a  similar  dis- 
play in  the  reception-room  at  Norderney)  that 
they  were  portraits  of  pilots  who  had  lost  their 
lives  in  active  service.  One — a  three-quarters 
length  of  a  small  wiry  man,  with  gimlet  eyes  and 
a  jaw  that  would  have  made  that  of  a  wolf -trap 
look  soft  and  flexible  in  comparison — I  recognized 
at  once  as  having  been  reproduced  in  the  German 
papers  as  the  portrait  of  the  great  Schramm,  who 
had  been  killed  when  his  Zeppelin  was  brought 
down  at  Potters7  Bar.  Another — the  bust  of  a 
man  of  rather  a  bulkier  figure  than  the  first,  but 
with  a  face  a  shade  less  brutal — was  also  strangely 
familiar.  I  felt  sure  I  had  seen  before  that  terri- 
bly determined  jaw,  that  broad  nose  with  its  wide 
nostrils,  that  receding  brow,  with  the  bony  lumps 
above  the  eyes,  and  the  tentacles  of  my  memory 
went  groping  for  when  and  where,  while  I  went 
on  sipping  my  glass  of  Rotwein  and  listening  to 


152 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


Major  P- 


- 1  and  Ensign  E comparing  sen- 
sations on  dropping  from  airplanes  with  para- 
chutes. 

"If  the  Huns,"  the  former  was  saying,  "had 
had  proper  parachutes  most  of  the  crews  of  the 
Zepps  brought  down  in  England  could  have  landed 
safely  instead  of  being  burned  in  the  air.  Of  the 
remains  of  the  crew  of  the  one  brought  down  at 
Cuffley,  hardly  a  fragment  was  recognizable  as 
that  of  a  man.  But  if — " 

Like  a  flash  it  came  to  me.  The  warm,  com- 
fortable room,  with  its  solid  "New  Art"  furniture 
and  the  table  stacked  with  plates  of  food  and  wine 
bottles,  faded  away,  and  I  saw  a  tangled  heap  of 
metal  and  burning  debris,  sprawling  across  a 
stubble  field  and  hedgerow,  and  steaming  in  the 
cold  early  morning  drizzle  that  was  quenching  its 
still  smouldering  fires.  Five  hours  previously 
that  wreckage  had  been  a  raiding  Zeppelin,  charg- 
ing blindly  across  London,  pursued  by  search- 
lights and  gun-fire.  I  had  watched  the  ghostly 
shape  disappear  in  the  darkness  as  it  shook  off 
the  beams  of  the  searchlights,  and  when  it  ap- 
peared again  it  was  as  a  descending  comet  of 
streaming  flame  streaking  earthward  across  the 

i  Major  Pritchard,  who  subsequently  distinguished  himself  by 
landing  from  R-34,  after  its  transatlantic  flight,  with  a  para- 
chute. 


The  Den  of  the  Zeppelins  153 

orth-western  heavens.  After  walking  all  the 
rest  of  the  night — with  a  lift  from  an  early  morn- 
ing milk  cart — I  had  arrived  on  the  scene  at  day- 
break, and  before  the  cordon  of  soldiers  which 
later  kept  the  crowds  back  had  been  drawn.  They 
had  just  cut  a  way  through  the  wreckage  to  one 
of  the  cars,  and  were  cooling  down  the  glowing 
metal  with  a  stream  pumped  by  a  little  village 
fire-engine.  Then  they  began  taking  out  what  re- 
mained of  the  bodies  of  the  crew.  Some  had  been 
almost  entirely  consumed  by  the  fierce  flames,  and 
it  is  literally  true  that  many  of  the  blackened  frag- 
ments were  hardly  recognizable  as  human.  But 
there  was  one  notable  exception.  By  a  miracle, 
the  chest  and  head  of  the  body  of  what  had  un- 
doubtedly been  the  commanding  officer  had  been 
spared  the  direct  play  of  the  flames.  The  fingers 
gripping  the  steering  wheel  were  charred  to  the 
bone,  but  the  upper  part  of  the  tunic  was  so  little 
scorched  that  it  still  held  the  Iron  Cross  pinned 
into  it.  The  blonde  eyebrows,  beneath  the  bony 
cranial  protuberances,  were  scarcely  singed,  and 
even  the  scowl  and  the  tightly  compressed  lips 
seemed  to  express  intense  determination  rather 
than  death  agony.  That  portrait — and  doubtless 
most  of  the  others  that  looked  down  upon  our 
strange  luncheon  party  that  day  at  Nordholz— - 
must  have  been  painted  from  life. 


VI 


MERCHANT    SHIPPING 

THE  difference  between  the  work  of  the  Shipping 
Board  of  the  Allied  Naval  Armistice  Commission 
and  that  of  the  other  sub-commissions  was  well 
defined  by  one  of  its  members  when  he  facetiously 
described  it  as  "the  only  branch  of  the  business 
that  pays  dividends."  The  work  of  the  sub-com- 
missions for  the  inspection  of  warships,  seaplane 
and  airship  stations  and  forts,  in  that  it  was  for 
the  purpose  of  seeing  that  certain  disarmament 
or  demolition  had  been  carried  out,  was  largely 
destructive;  that  of  the  Shipping  Board,  on  the 
other  hand,  which  had  as  its  end  the  return  to  the 
Allies  of  all  of  their  merchant  ships  interned  in 
German  harbours,  was  constructive.  The  Ship- 
ping Board  began  to  "pay  dividends "  (in  the 
form  of  steamers  dispatched  for  home  ports)  al- 
most from  the  day  of  the  arrival  of  the  Hercules 
in  Wilhelmshaven,  and  these  continued  steadily 
until  the  last  of  the  interned  ships  surviving — a 
number  had,  unfortunately,  been  lost  in  mine- 
sweeping  and  other  dangerous  work  in  which  the 
Germans  had  employed  them — had  found  its  way 

154  : 


Merchant  Shipping  155 

back  to  resume  its  place  as  a  carrier  of  men  and 
merchandise  and  restore  the  heavily  depleted  ton- 
nage of  the  country  to  which  it  belonged. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  there  were  ninety- 
six  Allied  vessels  in  German  harbours,  and  all  of 
these  were  promptly  placed  under  embargo.  Of 
these,  eighty  were  British,  fourteen  Belgian,  and 
two  French.  As  all  of  the  French  and  Belgian 
ships  were  small  craft,  their  tonnage  was  practi- 
cally negligible.  Besides  these  embargoed  ships, 
the  Allied  Commission  had  been  directed  to  de- 
mand and  arrange  for  the  return  of  the  thirty-one 
— twenty-one  British,  eight  Belgian,  one  Ameri- 
can, and  one  Brazilian — Allied  ships  which  had 
been  condemned  in  German  Prize  Courts  since  the 
outbreak  of  the  war.  Ten  of  these,  it  was  subse- 
quently learned  when  the  question  came  up  in  con- 
ference, had  been  sunk,  the  Germans  having  made 
a  practice  of  using  Allied  ships  in  their  hands  for 
all  work  involving  great  risk. 

The  question  of  the  return  of  mercantile  ton- 
nage was  taken  up  in  the  course  of  the  first  con- 
ference in  the  Hercules  at  Kiel.  Admiral  Goette 
was  requested  to  produce  a  complete  list  of  all 
Allied  and  American  ships  lying  at  the  time  in 
German  ports,  including  all  mercantile  vessels 
which  had  been  condemned  in  Prize  Courts.  This 


156          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

list  was  to  show  clearly  which  vessels  were  con- 
sidered seaworthy,  and  if  unseaworthy,  from  what 
cause.  It  was  also  requested  that  information 
should  be  given  as  to  which  of  these  ships  were 
fitted  for  mine-seeking  or  mine-sweeping,  as  it  was 
planned  to  leave  these  temporarily  in  German 
hands  in  order  to  facilitate  the  efforts  she  was 
supposed  to  he  making  to  clear  the  way  for  navi- 
gation. It  was  directed  that  ships  ready  to  take 
the  sea  should  be  bunkered  and  ballasted  at  once, 
and  that  towage  should  be  provided  for  sailing 
ships.  All  explosives  were  to  be  removed,  and 
the  Germans  were  ordered  to  provide  a  steamer 
to  bring  back  the  crews  from  the  ports  at  which 
the  embargoed  ships  had  been  delivered — the 
Tyne,  in  case  of  British  vessels,  and  Dunkerque 
for  French. 

In  respect  to  the  ships  considered  unseaworthy, 
Admiral  Goette  was  requested  to  arrange  for  all 
machinery,  boilers,  tanks,  and  spaces  to  be  opened 
up,  and  the  equipment  made  ready  for  inspection 
by  the  Sub-Commission  for  Shipping.  Following 
this  inspection,  immediate  facilities  for  dry 
docking  and  the  carrying  out  of  such  repairs 
as  the  Sub-Commission  considered  necessary 
to  prepare  each  vessel  for  sea  were  to  be 
provided. 


Merchant  Shipping 


157 


Although  more  than  three  weeks  had  passed 
since  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  Admiral  Goette 
admitted  at  once  on  the  presentation  of  these  de- 
mands that  not  only  had  no  seaworthy  Allied  ship 
started  on  its  voyage  home,  but  that  nothing  what- 
ever had  been  done  in  the  way  of  repairing  any 
of  those  not  seaworthy.  He  agreed,  however,  to 
do  what  he  could  to  expedite  matters  from  that 
time  on  in  the  case  of  the  embargoed  ships,  but 
protested  that,  as  the  ships  condemned  in  the 
Prize  Courts  had,  according  to  German  law,  ceased 
to  be  Allied  vessels,  he  had  no  authority  to  de- 
liver them.  On  being  told  that  the  Allied  Com- 
mission had  been  appointed  to  deal  with  the  terms 
of  the  armistice,  not  to  discuss  matters  of  German 
or  any  other  law,  he  finally  gave  way  and  agreed 
to  furnish  a  list  of  the  prize  ships.  He  made  the 
reservation,  however,  that  the  "  question  of  legal- 
ity, "  since  it  did  not  concern  the  conferring  com- 
missions, should  be  taken  up  later  between  the  in- 
terested Governments. 

Indeed,  protests,  as  preliminaries  to  acqui- 
escence, formed  the  major  part  of  the  German 
notes  on  the  shipping  question,  as  will  be  seen 
from  the  following  extracts.  "I  herewith  bring 
officially  to  your  notice,''  the  President  of  the 
German  Sub-Commission  wrote  after  the  first  con- 


158          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ference,  (1)  "that  we  do  not  recognize  the  obliga- 
tions demanded  by  the  Allies  to  deliver  embargo 
ships  on  the  17th  December  by  the  fact  that  we  are 
willing  to  deliver  them  at  the  earliest  possible  mo- 
ment ";  and  (2)  "that  embargo  ships  proceeding 
out  at  the  request  of  the  Allies  without  having 
been  reconditioned  in  a  manner  to  put  them  in  the 
same  condition  in  which  they  were  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  will  leave  prematurely  under  pro- 
test. Germany  declines  any  further  obligations 
with  regard  to  these  ships. "  Writing  after  the 
first  extension  of  the  armistice  and  referring  to 
that  fact,  he  intimates  that  "the  period  for  ful- 
filling the  provisions  of  Article  XXX "  (the  repair 
of  ships)  "is  also  prolonged  until  January  17, 
1919.  Accordingly  Germany  is  not  obliged  to 
hand  over  the  interned  ships  before  the  17th  Jan- 
uary. In  spite  of  this  Germany  will  make  every 
endeavour  in  the  future  also  to  deliver  these  in- 
terned ships  as  soon  as  possible,  and,  as  hitherto, 
will  seek  to  carry  out  the  terms  of  the  armistice 
most  loyally.  .  .  .  Without  being  under  any  obli- 
gation to  do  so,  and  merely  in  order  to  furnish 
further  proofs  of  the  loyal  and  business-like  in- 
tentions of  carrying  out  the  terms  of  the  armistice, 
measures  have  been  taken  for  carrying  on  recon- 
ditioning, as  far  as  that  is  possible  and  without 


Merchant  Shipping  159 

prejudice,  in  accordance  with  the  newest  regu- 
lations of  the  British  Lloyd. " 

The  same  formula,  it  will  be  observed,  was  fol- 
lowed in  connection  with  each  subject  under  con- 
sideration. There  was  first  the  protest,  then  an 
intimation  that  the  wish  of  the  Allies  should  be 
carried  out  in  spite  of  the  fact  there  was  no  obli- 
gation to  do  so,  and  finally  the  invariable  "patting 
of  themselves  on  the  back"  on  the  part  of  the  Ger- 
mans for  the  ' '  loyalty  of  spirit ' '  thus  displayed. 

There  was  a  subtle  appeal  to  British  sportsman- 
ship in  this  paragraph  from  one  of  the  communi- 
cations of  the  President  of  the  German  Shipping 
Commission.  "I  again  request  you  to  signify 
your  approval  that  the  German  embargo  steamer, 
Marie  (ex  Dave  Hill),  now  lying  in  Batavia,  in 
recognition  of  her  signal  services  during  the  war, 
both  from  the  military  point  of  view  and  seaman- 
ship, should  be  permitted  first  to  put  in  with  her 
crew  to  a  German  port;  the  ship  will  then,  after 
handing  over  her  German  fittings,  be  delivered  as 
quickly  as  arranged  in  the  Tyne." 

It  was  not  stated  what  the  "signal  services " 
of  the  Marie  had  been  in  the  war,  nor  for  whom 
they  had  been  performed ;  but  I  am  under  the  im- 
pression she  was  the  ship  which  was  credited  with 
the  very  fine  exploit  of  running  the  British  block- 


160          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ade  of  East  Africa,  delivering  a  cargo  of  arms 
and  munitions  to  Von  Letow,  and  then  making 
her  escape  to  the  Dutch  Indies.  As  this  cargo 
was  the  one  thing  which  enabled  the  East  African 
campaign  to  be  carried  on  to  the  end  of  the  war 
(when  it  must  otherwise  inevitably  have  termi- 
nated a  year  or  two  earlier),  there  can  be  no  two 
ways  of  looking  at  the  '  '  signal  service ' '  the  Marie 
performed — for  the  Germans. 

Owing  to  the  difficulty  in  securing  crews  to  take 
the  ships  to  the  Tyne,  Admiral  Goette  requested 
that  the  Allied  Commission  should  furnish  in  ad- 
vance a  guarantee  of  safety  for  those  who  could 
be  induced  to  make  the  voyage.  Admiral  Brown- 
ing ?s  reply  was  a  counter-demand  for  a  guarantee 
of  safety  for  the  parties  landing  from  the  Hercu- 
les to  carry  out  their  inspections  of  German  ships 
and  air  stations.  "The  word  of  my  Commission 
is  given  here  and  now,"  he  said,  "in  the  presence 
of  many  witnesses,  for  the  security  of  any  Ger- 
man subject  who  may,  in  the  course  of  the  execu- 
tion of  the  armistice,  land  in  Great  Britain.  It  is 
not  customary  to  give  written  assurances  regard- 
ing the  honourable  observation  of  the  law  of  na- 
tions, but  in  the  case  of  Germany  we  are  obliged  to 
ask  for  guarantees  in  writing  because  of  the  de- 
scription which  has  been  furnished  us  of  the  state 
of  the  country.  We  are  obliged  to  ask  before  we 


Merchant  Shipping  161 

take  any  steps  to  see  that  the  terms  of  the  armis- 
tice are  executed,  that  the  parties  should  be  able  to 
perform  their  duties  without  danger,  let,  or  hin- 
drance. " 

Admiral  Goette  conceded  this  demand,  and  then 
went  on  to  press  his  own  in  a  statement  highly  illu- 
minative of  the  abject  position  the  German  naval 
authorities  found  themselves  in  their  relations 
with  both  the  men  of  the  warships  and  merchant 
sailors.  "I  wish  to  explain, "  he  said,  "that  the 
request  which  we  make  is  not  to  be  construed  into 
an  expression  of  suspicion  or  distrust.  It  is 
merely  in  the  interests  of  the  men  themselves,  as 
we  experienced  in  the  case  of  the  personnel  of  the 
submarines  taken  to  English  ports  that  the  men 
were  obviously  under  great  apprehension  that 
something  might  happen  to  them  on  coming  into 
English  parts.  The  guarantee  is  merely  wanted 
as  something  definite  to  show  the  crews,  as  we 
have  great  difficulty  in  getting  the  men  to  believe 
us.  That  is  why  we  also  suggest  that  the  German 
Commission  should  receive  the  minutes  of  the 
conference,  as  they  would  be  quite  enough  for  our 
purpose  in  order  to  be  able  to  show  the  men  in 
print  that  the  declaration  has  been  actually 
made." 

The  mutual  guarantees  were  subsequently  given 
in  writing  as  follows : — 


162          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

GUARANTEE  BY  THE   GOVERNMENT   AT   BERLIN  AS  TO 

THE  SAFETY  OF  MEMBERS  OF  THE  ALLIED  COM- 
MISSION  DURING   THEIR   STAY   IN    GERMANY. 

Berlin. 

December  6,  1918. 
Foreign  Office. 
No.  172192. 

The  safety  of  the  members  of  the  Allied  Com- 
mission and  of  the  representatives  of  the  United 
States  is  guaranteed  by  the  Government  of  the 
State  for  the  whole  extent  of  German  territory. 
All  representatives  and  functionaries  of  the  Ad- 
ministration of  the  State,  the  Federal  States  and 
Municipalities  of  the  Army  and  of  the  Navy  are 
requested  to  give  them  every  protection  and  to 
assist  them  in  every  way  in  the  unhindered  exe- 
cution of  their  work. 
The  Government  of  the  State. 

(Signed)  EBERT. 
HAASE. 

GUARANTEE  AS  TO  SECURITY  OF  GERMAN  CREWS  OF 
MERCHANT  VESSELS 

H.M.S.  Hercules. 

December  6,  1918. 

The  Allied  Naval  Armistice  Commission. 
No.  0379. 

In  reply  to  your  verbal  request  of  yesterday, 
5th  December,  1918,  we  hereby  authorize  you  to 


Merchant  Shipping  163 

communicate  to  those  concerned  our  assurance 
that  the  security  of  the  crews  sent  over  in  mer- 
chant vessels,  restored  under  Article  XXX,  Terms 
of  Armistice,  will  be  properly  safeguarded  on 
their  arrival  in  British  or  French  ports. 

A  copy  of  this  document  will  be  forwarded  to 
the  Admiralty  in  London  and  to  the  Ministry  of 
Marine  in  Paris  accordingly. 

(Signed)  M.  E.  BROWNING,  Vice- Admiral. 

(Signed)  M.  F.  A.  GRASSET,  Contre-Amiral. 

To  Rear- Admiral  Ernst  Goette. 

Guarantees  having  been  provided,  the  follow- 
ing instructions  were  handed  to  the  German  Com- 
mission regarding  the  carrying  out  of  inspections 
under  the  terms  of  the  armistice : — 

1.  The  Allied  Naval  Commission  shall  be  re- 
ceived on  board  each  mercantile  vessel  to  be  in- 
spected by  officers  of  approximately  equivalent 
rank  and  conducted  through  the  vessel,  visiting 
such  places  and  compartments  as  the  Allied  Com- 
mission may  wish. 

2.  All    compartments    are    to    be    adequately 
lighted. 

3.  All  vessels  shall  be  cleared  of  men  before 
and  during  the  inspection,  with  the  exception  of 
those  necessary  to   open  up  machinery,   doors, 
hatches,  etc. 


164          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

4.  If  guns  are  mounted  they  are  to  be  uncovered, 
and  all  explosives  removed  from  the  vessel. 

The  Allied  inspection  parties  were  instructed 
as  follows : — 

(a)  To  satisfy  themselves  that  all  Allied  vessels 
are  bunkered,  ballasted,  and  sufficiently  manned 
for  the  passage  to  the  Tyne,  in  the  case  of  British 
and  Belgian  vessels,  and  to  Dunkerque,  in  the  case 
of  French  vessels. 

(b)  To  ensure  that  the  necessary  repairs  and 
dry  docking  of  unseaworthy  ships  are  carried  out 
by  the  German  authorities. 

(c)  To  ascertain  that  sufficient  deck  and  engine 
stores  are  provided  for  the  passage. 

(d)  That  all  ships'  papers,  including  Log  Book 
and  Eegister,  confiscated  on  internment  are  re- 
turned. 

(e)  That  ammunition  and  explosives  are  landed 
from  the  vessels  which  have  been  used  for  war 
purposes. 

The  arrival  of  the  lists  of  embargo  and  prize 
ships  showed  them  to  be  scattered  about  among  a 
large  number  of  ports  on  both  the  North  Sea  and 
the  Baltic.  As  lack  of  time  precluded  the  possi- 
bility of  visiting  Danzig  or  any  other  Baltic  ports 
east  of  Kiel,  it  was  arranged  that  all  seaworthy 
ships  in  these  ports  should  proceed  to  Kiel  for 
inspection.  After  completing  the  inspection  of 


Merchant  Shipping  165 

the  five  ships  in  Wilhelmshaven  (two  of  which 
were  found  to  have  machinery  defects  which  made 
it  impossible  to  deliver  them  without  extensive  re- 
pairs), the  Shipping  Board  departed  by  train  for 
Hamburg  and  Bremerhaven,  where  the  greater 
part  of  their  work  was  to  be  done.  Before  they 
rejoined  the  Hercules  three  days  later  at  Kiel 
over  thirty  British  ships  had  been  inspected  and 
the  preliminary  steps  taken  for  their  return  to 
the  Tyne. 

Admiral  Goette's  report  at  the  first  conference 
respecting  conditions  at  Hamburg  and  the  vicin- 
ity had  made  it  appear  probable  that  a  visit  to  the 
Elbe  would  be  entirely  out  of  the  question,  and 
even  after  guarantees  of  safety  had  arrived  it 
still  seemed  that  venturing  there  would  be  at- 
tended by  uncertainty  if  not  danger.  "In  the 
Elbe,"  the  President  of  the  German  Commission 
had  said,  "power  is  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the 
Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Council,  and  Naval  Offi- 
cers have  no  authority  or  influence  whatever. 
One  of  the  chief  supports  of  the  Workmen's  and 
Soldiers'  Council  is  the  light  cruiser  Augsburg. 
There  are  also  some  torpedo-boats,  mine-sweeping 
vessels  and  other  small  craft  there  which  should  be 
disarmed;  but  officers  at  Wilhelmshaven  have  no 
power  to  see  to  it,  nor  can  they  give  any  definite 
information  as  to  what  is  there.  .  The  Elbe  is 


166          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

much  less  under  the  influence  of  the  Berlin  Gov- 
ernment than  either  Wilhelmshaven  or  Kiel.  The 
Elbe  Eepublic  appears  to  have  been  much  more 
radical  than  the  others  from  the  start,  and  has 
from  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution  refused  to 
co-operate  with  the  Naval  Officers,  while  such  co- 
operation was  at  once  in  effect  in  Wilhelmshaven 
and  Kiel. " 

It  is  by  no  means  improbable  that  Admiral 
Goette  was  quite  sincere  in  this  summary  of  con- 
ditions on  the  Elbe ;  indeed,  so  far  as  the  lack  of 
authority  on  the  part  of  Naval  Officers  was  con- 
cerned, it  was  an  accurate  statement  of  the  case. 
But  in  assuming  that  this  would  necessarily  make 
it  impossible  for  the  Allied  Shipping  Board  to 
carry  out  their  work  he  proved  quite  wrong. 
Contemptuous  as  they  were  of  their  ex-officers,  the 
men,  far  from  displaying  any  desire  to  interfere 
with  the  work  of  the  Commission,  proved  them- 
selves no  less  willing  than  their  mates  in  Wil- 
helmshaven to  help  in  any  way  they  could.  The 
Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  Council  took  over  the 
protection  of  the  party  from  the  moment  of  its 
arrival,  and,  save  for  a  single  incident  which  could 
hardly  have  been  classed  as  "  preventable, "  noth- 
ing of  an  untoward  nature  occurred  in  the  course 
of  the  visit. 

At  Hamburg  the  party  put  up  at  the  Hotel  At- 


IN  THE  ELBE,   HAMBURG 


RAILROAD  STATION  AT  HAMBURG 


Merchant  Shipping  167 

lantic,  where  they  reported  that  their  comfort  was 
extremely  well  looked  after  in  every  way.  Occu- 
pying a  wing  to  themselves  and  using  a  private 
dining-room,  they  saw  little  of  the  other  guests. 
They  were  not  allowed  to  linger  in  the  foyer  or  any 
of  the  public  rooms  on  the  ground  floor,  and  as 
soon  as  they  had  reached  their  rooms  an  armed 
guard  of  the  Workmen  and  Soldiers  took  station 
at  the  entrance  to  the  corridor.  These  precau- 
tions appeared  quite  unnecessary,  as  no  signs  of 
unfriendliness  of  any  kind  were  in  evidence. 

The  rooms  were  large  and  furnished  with  all 
their  pre-war  luxuriousness.  The  linen  was 
abundant  and  of  fine  quality.  The  steam  heaters 
had  to  be  turned  off  to  prevent  the  rooms  becoming 
overheated.  The  response  from  the  hot-water 
taps  was  immediate.  The  brass  fittings  were  still 
in  place,  and  there  were  no  signs  of  ersatz  towels, 
sheets,  or  even  lace  curtains.  Soap  was  the  only 
thing  missing,  but  that  difficulty  was  common  to 
all  Germany.  Food  (even  on  one  of  the  days 
which  was  meatless)  was  both  abundant  and 
wholesome — "well  up  to  the  average  in  a  first- 
class  English  hotel, "  as  one  of  the  members  put 
it.  There  was  an  ample  and  varied  wine  list  to 
order  from,  including — besides  many  Rhine  and 
Hungarian  brands — several  French  and  Italian 
brandies  and  liqueurs.  There  was  some  discus- 


168          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

sion  over  the  cigars,  the  only  point  upon  which  the 
Commission  were  unanimous  being  that  they  were 
not  tobacco,  and  that  any  member  desiring  to  ex- 
periment in  the  effect  of  them  upon  a  human  being 
should  do  so  upon  himself,  and  in  his  own  room. 
German  "  substitute "  tobacco  looks  better  than  it 
smokes ;  in  fact,  the  only  way  in  which  the  Work- 
men 's  and  Soldiers'  guards  attached  to  our  par- 
ties were  in  the  least  obnoxious  was  through  put- 
ting up  "smoke  barrages/'  and  even  these  were 
avoidable  except  in  turrets,  magazines,  shaft  tun- 
nels, and  other  enclosed  spaces. 

The  inspection  of  the  twenty-four  British  ships 
in  the  Elbe  revealed  the  fact  that  it  had  been  the 
German  practice  to  convert  the  best  of  the  em- 
bargo steamers  into  mine-layers,  net-layers,  sea- 
plane carriers,  and  other  types  of  war  auxiliaries. 
These  had  been  kept  in  the  best  of  condition,  and, 
allowing  for  the  hard  service  they  had  been  en- 
gaged in,  were  in  practically  as  good  shape  as 
when  first  -seized.  The  second-grade  steamers 
and  sailing  vessels  had  merely  been  laid  up  and 
left  to  go  to  rack  and  ruin.  Stripped  of  every- 
thing in  the  way  of  metal  or  gear  that  was  likely 
to  prove  of  use  elsewhere,  unpainted,  uncared-for 
and  covered  with  four-and-a-half  years'  accumu- 
lation of  rust  and  filth,  they  presented  a  sorry 
sight.  Although  yielding  little  in  the  way  of 


Merchant  Shipping  169 

metal  or  technical  instruments,  the  sailing  ships 
had  furnished  useful  loot  in  the  form  of  hempen 
ropes  and  canvas,  of  both  of  which  they  were 
stripped  to  the  last  ravellings. 

There  was  one  very  interesting  discovery  made 
in  connection  with  the  inspection  of  these  laid-up 
ships  in  the  Elbe.  A  number  of  them  were  found 
to  have  been  filled  with  concrete,  with  the  evident 
intention  of  using  them  as  block  ships.  Naturally, 
no  explanation  of  what  had  been  in  the  wind  to 
prompt  this  action  was  volunteered,  but  the  fact 
tliat  the  work  had  been  done  at  a  comparatively 
recent  date  pointed  strongly  to  the  probability  that 
the  Germans,  stung  to  the  quick  by  the  blocking  of 
Zeebrugge  and  Ostend,  were  preparing  a  reply, 
most  likely  against  the  entrance  to  the  Tyne.  One 
has  only  to  look  at  the  chart  to  understand  that 
the  latter  is  a  readily  "blockable"  estuary — to 
any  adequately  equipped  force  able  to  reach  the 
proper  point.  Needless  to  say,  such  a  contingency 
was  not  unprovided  against,  and  it  would  have 
been  a  near-miracle  if  even  the  most  dare-devil 
leadership  could  have  brought  such  a  force  half- 
way across  the  North  Sea.  Whether  the  armis- 
tice put  an  end  to  uncompleted  preparations,  or 
whether  the  plan  was  given  up  in  despair  before 
that  time  (perhaps  through  a  failure  to  secure 
the  necessary  force  of  volunteers),  there  was  noth- 


170          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ing  to  indicate,  though  doubtless  revelations 
throwing  light  on  this  interesting  mystery  will  be 
forthcoming  from  Germany  before  long. 

Fortunately,  the  concrete  had  been  put  into 
these  ships  in  the  form  of  blocks  instead  of  being 
poured,  so  that  the  clearing  of  their  holds  was  not 
a  serious  matter. 

The  drives  in  motor-cars  through  the  streets  of 
Hamburg  revealed  the  same  well-dressed,  well-fed 
crowds  which  had  been  so  much  in  evidence  in 
Wilhelmshaven,  and  not  even  in  the  docks  or  ship- 
yards were  there  any  signs  of  the  starvation  we 
had  been  assured  prevailed  in  all  the  great  indus- 
trial centres.  The  people  were  mildly  curious 
but  not  in  the  least  unfriendly.  The  only  occasion 
on  which  anything  unpleasant  occurred  was  when 
a  navvy,  splashed  by  the  mud  from  one  of  the  lead- 
ing cars,  petulantly  slammed  his  shovel  through 
the  glass  of  the  next  in  line.  The  nerves  and 
tempers  of  the  three  French  shipping  commission- 
ers were  the  only  things  beside  the  glass  which 
suffered  seriously  as  a  consequence  of  this  contre- 
temps. The  Workmen's  and  Soldiers'  guards 
promptly  asserted  their  authority  by  arresting  the 
captious  culprit,  profuse  apologies  for  the  indig- 
nity were  offered  by  the  German  officers  conduct- 
ing the  party  at  the  time,  and  later  the  President 
of  their  Shipping  Commission  called  on  Com- 


Merchant  Shipping  171 

modore  Bevan  at  the  hotel  to  make  formal  expres- 
sion of  regrets. 

There  was  a  refreshing  naivete  in  the  explana- 
tion offered  by  one  of  the  German  officers  of  the 
reason  for  this  little  incident.  "It  was  all  the 
fault  of  the  chauffeur/'  he  said.  "The  man  used 
to  drive  for  Admiral  X—  -  of  the  General  Staff, 
and  he  forgot  that  he  must  no  longer  let  his  car 
throw  mud  on  the  street  workmen. ' ' 

The  German  naval  officer  who  received  the  Al- 
lied party  on  one  of  the  British  merchantmen  was 
found  in  a  state  of  considerable  excitement.  He 
had  been  fired  at  from  the  darkness  the  night  be- 
fore, he  said,  and  missed  by  a  hair.  Interpreting 
this  as  a  warning  against  wearing  his  naval  uni- 
form ashore,  he  had  dressed  in  civil  attire  that 
morning,  brought  his  uniform  along  in  a  parcel, 
and  changed  into  it  on  board. 

"  You'd  pity  any  one  but  a  Hun  for  having  to  do 
a  thing  like  that, ' '  was  the  dry  comment  of  one  of 
the  British  members  of  the  party  when  this  tale 
of  woe  was  translated  to  him. 

An  instance  of  the  unquenchable  optimism  of 
the  German  industrialist  regarding  the  eagerly 
awaited  future  when  the  seas  and  the  markets  of 
the  world  are  again  open  to  him  was  furnished 
in  the  course  of  a  visit  to  the  great  Blohm  and 
Voss  yards,  which  occupy  about  the  same  position 


172          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

on  the  Elbe  as  do  those  of  John  Brown  or  Fair- 
fields  on  the  Clyde,  or  Harland  and  Wolff  at  Bel- 
fast. Several  of  the  embargo  ships  were  under- 
going repairs  here,  and  in  going  over  one  of  these 
it  was  pointed  out  by  Commodore  Be  van  that  it 
ought  to  be  ready  to  put  to  sea  some  days  inside 
the  limit  set  by  the  Germans  for  the  completion 
of  reconditioning. 

"It  is  quite  true  the  ship  will  be  in  a  state  to 
make  the  voyage  to  the  Tyne  by  the  time  you  say,." 
replied  Herr  M ,  the  Director  who  was  show- 
ing the  party  round,  "but  it  will  take  a  number 
of  days  longer  to  put  it  in  the  same  state  it  was 
when  placed  under  embargo.  It  would  be  a  short- 
sighted policy  on  our  part  to  send  a  badly  repaired 
ship  out  of  our  yards  at  the  present  time,  for  it 
would  be  certain  to  react  seriously  in  the  matter 
of  future  orders.  You  must  bear  in  mind,  sir, 
that  we  have  a  world-wide  reputation  for  thor- 
oughness to  maintain." 

He  appeared  far  from  reassured  when  he  was 
told  that  the  condition  he  sent  the  British  ships 
home  in  would  have  no  effect  whatever  upon  his 
future  business  with  the  rest  of  the  world;  more- 
over, he  must  have  found  that  the  longer  he  pon- 
dered that  plain  statement  the  less  comfort  there 
was  to  be  extracted  from  it.  It  is  astonishing  how 
few  Germans  appear  to  realize  that  there  are  other 


Merchant  Shipping  173 

things  besides  workmanship  and  quality — to  say 
nothing  of  long  credits,  state  subsidies  and  push- 
ful salesmen — that  will  profoundly  affect  the  fu- 
ture of  German  trade. 

The  inspection  of  the  eight  interned  vessels  at 
Bremerhaven  brought  out  nothing  of  more  than 
routine  interest,  but  the  visit  to  the  great  home 
port  of  the  North  German  *Lloyd  on  the  Weser, 
just  as  had  the  one  to  that  of  the  Hamburg- 
Amerika  Line  on  the  Elbe,  offered  an  incompar- 
able opportunity  to  see  at  first  hand  the  stagger- 
ing blow  which  the  war  had  dealt  to  German  ship- 
ping and — through  shipping — to  German  foreign 
trade.  Although  the  fact  that  I  had  been  attached 
for  the  moment  to  the  sub-commissions  inspecting 
seaplane  and  Zeppelin  stations  prevented  my  vis- 
iting Hamburg  and  Bremerhaven  with  the  Ship- 
ping Board,  an  illuminating  glimpse  of  the  latter 
was  offered  me  during  the  passage  of  the  Weser 
in  the  course  of  the  journey  to  Nordholz. 

Although  the  day  was  overcast  and  there  was 
some  mistiness  on  the  water,  one  could  still  see 
far  enough  up  and  down  stream  during  the  pas- 
sage to  note  the  effects  of  the  complete  stagnation 
which  had  settled  from  the  outbreak  of  the  war 
upon  this  second  of  Germany's  great  maritime 
ports.  The  name  BREMERHAVEN  had  appeared  in 
raised  gilt  letters  across  the  stern  of  every  one 


174          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

of  the  hundreds  of  North  German  Lloyd  steamers, 
and  from  New  York  to  Shanghai,  from  Sydney  to 
Durban,  one  was  confronted  with  it  in  most  of  the 
ports  of  the  world,  but  especially  those  of  the  Far 
East  and  Australia.  I  had  seen  it  on  the  black- 
hulled,  buff-funnelled  freighters  that  were  carry- 
ing Dutch  goods  from  Ternate  to  Batavia,  Chinese 
goods  from  Tientsin  to  Foochow,  Japanese  goods 
from  Kobe  to  Nagasaki,  British  goods  between 
Sandakan  and  Singapore.  The  "Crossed  Keys" 
house-flag  was  known  throughout  the  East  as  the 
symbol  of  that  notorious  German  trade  policy  of 
heavy  rate-cutting  until  competition  had  been 
killed  and  then  a  forcing  up  of  tariffs  to  just  un- 
der a  figure  which  would  be  calculated  to  revive 
competition.  But  while  the  Germans  had  plotted 
thus  ruthlessly  to  strangle  foreign  competition, 
between  their  own  lines  nothing  of  the  kind  was 
ever  allowed  to  go  on.  The  Hamburg-Amerika 
and  the  Norddeutscher-Lloyd,  with  three  or  four 
other  German  lines  of  secondary  importance,  had 
divided  up  the  world  into  "  spheres "  of  trade, 
with  no  line  encroaching  upon  that  of  another  ex- 
cept for  certain  inevitable  "  over-lapping "  in  pas- 
senger traffic  on  the  Mediterranean  and  North 
Atlantic  routes. 

The   lines    of   the    Norddeutscher-Lloyd   were 
stretched  like  the  tentacles  of  an  octopus  over  the 


Merchant  Shipping  175 

Indian  Ocean  and  the  Eastern  Pacific,  and  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  it  was  sucking  trade  from 
every  British,  French,  Dutch,  and  Scandinavian 
line  that  plied  to  the  ports  of  Australia,  Malaysia, 
China,  and  the  Philippines  upon  which  it  had 
fastened  its  slimy  grip.  The  "N.D.L."  was  more 
than  a  German  steamship  line;  it  was  Germany 
itself — Germany  beginning  to  rivet  down  the  edges 
of  its  ' l  places  in  the  sun. ' '  It  was  Herr  Heiniken, 
the  president  of  this  great  instrument  of 
' '  Deutschland  Ueber  Alles,"  who,  in  Hongkong  in 
1911,  exclaimed  to  a  diplomat  with  whom  he  was 
discussing  the  Kaiser's  Agadir  bluff:  "War! 
that,  sir,  is  the  one  thing  I  want  to  avoid.  What 
do  we  want  to  spend  money  and  men  on  war  when 
—within  ten  years  at  our  present  rate  of  progress 
— we  can  win  everything  that  the  most  successful 
war  could  possibly  give  us?  War  might  be  a 
short  cut  to  German  world-power;  and  again,  it 
might  not.  But  hegemony  by  the  trade  route — 
provided  only  we  continue  to  enjoy  the  freedom 
we  have  today — is  sure.  Our  ships  and  merchants 
have  already  won  half  the  battle,  and  victory  is  in 
sight  if  they  are  only  allowed  to  go  on." 

Herr  Heiniken  was  a  hard-headed,  clear-seeing 
man,  and  one  shudders  to  think  how  much  truth 
there  was  in  the  words  quoted.  But  the  slower, 
more  round-about  "  trade  route "  to  world-power 


176          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

did  not  suit  the  hot-headed  Junkers,  and  they 
forced  their  country  to  attempt  to  reach  by  the 
short-cut  of  war  what  was  almost  within  the  reach 
of  their  merchants  and  shippers.  And  that  day 
at  Bremerhaven  we  saw  one  of  the  results. 
There,  sluddered  down  into  the  slime  from  which 
he  rose,  his  tentacles  all  either  severed  or  drawn 
in,  was  the  remains  of  the  "NJD.L."  octopus. 
Miles  and  miles  of  what  were  once  black-and-buff 
freighters  and  liners  were  lying  so  deep  in  harbour 
silt  that  it  would  have  taken  a  dredger  to  get 
them  out  of  their  slips.  The  tangles  of  sagging, 
weed-fringed  mooring  cables  running  over  and 
about  them — for  all  the  world  as  though  they 
had  been  meshed  in  the  web  of  a  Gargantuan 
spider — accentuated  the  helpless  immobility  of 
craft  that  had  once  flaunted  the  arrogant  red, 
white,  and  black  bunting  of  the  German  merchant 
marine  in  the  uttermost  corners  of  the  Seven  Seas. 
That  river  full  of  rotting  ships  was  more  than 
quiet — it  was  dead.  The  anchorage  of  the  in- 
terned High  Sea  Fleet,  off  the  inner  entrance  to 
Gutter  Sound  in  Scapa  Flow,  was  the  first  ceme- 
tery I  had  seen  of  the  ships  of  the  power  whose 
ruler  had  proclaimed  that  its  future  was  upon 
the  sea.  Bremerhaven  was  another  graveyard  of 
that  ambient  ambition.  And  the  rusting  hulks  of 
the  remains  of  the  "N.D.L."  fleet  was  not  all  that 


Merchant  Shipping  177 

was  buried  in  the  port  of  opulent  Bremen.  The 
ships  were  only  the  tombstones.  Deep  in  the 
mud  beneath  their  keels  was  sunk  the  crumpled 
framework  of  a  plan  which  was  a  long  way  far- 
ther on  the  way  to  consummation  than  most  of 
Americans  and  Britons  will  ever  realize — Ger- 
many's scheme  to  attain  world  domination  by 
trade.  Germany  will,  in  time  undoubtedly  have 
another  merchant  marine,  and  she  may  even  be- 
gin striving  before  long  toward  world  domina- 
tion by  any  means,  fair  or  foul,  that  offers  a  chance 
of  success.  But  there  is  a  slight  probability  that 
she  will  ever  again  hit  upon  any  road  that  will  take 
her  so  far  toward  the  goal  of  "DeutscMand  Ueber 
Alles"  as  did  the  "  trade  route, "  the  way  to  which 
is  now  all  but  closed.  There  was  the  dankness  of 
mould  in  the  wind  that  blew  across  the  graveyard 
of  the  high  ambitions  that  lie  buried  beyond  hope 
of  resurrection  in  the  mud  beneath  the  weed-foul 
bottoms  of  the  ships  of  Bremerhaven. 

The  whole  atmosphere  of  the  stagnant  water- 
front was  brooding  and  gloomy,  and  as  we  drew 
near  to  the  landing  I  was  conscious  of  a  pro- 
nounced depression,  for  no  man  who  loves  the  sea 
can  remain  unmoved  at  the  sight  of  neglected 
ships.  To  this  mood  the  cheery  chatter  of  a 
young  American  Ensign,  who  had  just  sauntered 
out  on  deck  after  warming  his  toes  at  the  char- 


178          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

coal  brazier  in  the  tug's  cabin,  came  as  a  welcome 
diversion. 

"There's  a  lot  of  funny  things  chalked  up  on 
the  walls  around  the  docks, ' '  he  said,  running  his 
eyes  over  the  signs  along  the  front,  "but  the  one 
word  that  is  written  over  the  whole  darn  layout 
is  'lehabod.'  'N.D.L.'  is  the  only  other  to  run 
i one-two-three'  with  it.  By  the  look  of  things  I 
take  it  that  stands  for  'No  D m  Luck.'  " 


VII 

THE    BOMBING    OF    TONDEEN 

THE  German  airship  station  at  Tondern  was  by  no 
means  the  largest  of  the  enemy  naval  stations, 
but  its  position  gave  it  an  importance  not  meas- 
ured by  the  number  of  its  sheds  or  its  airships. 

Situated  in  Schleswig,  not  far  from  the  Danish 
border,  its  ships  were  available  equally  for  recon- 
naissance in  the  North  Sea  or  the  Baltic,  including 
the  Kattegat,  and  all  the  devioius  straits  and 
passages  between  Denmark  and  the  Scandinavian 
Peninsula.  In  a  way,  with  the  seaplane  station  at 
Sylt,  it  formed  the  first  line  of  defence  against 
the  ever  increasing  British  mine-laying  sorties  in 
the  North  Sea  and  Kattegat.  The  actual  attacks 
against  these  mine-layers  came  to  be  left  more  and 
more  to  the  seaplanes,  though,  in  the  first  years 
of  the  war,  considerable  bomb-dropping  was  at- 
tempted here  from  Zeppelins.  The  vulnerability 
of  the  airship  to  aeroplane  attack — and,  notably, 
the  destruction  of  a  Zeppelin  by  a  plane  launched 
from  the  light  cruiser  Yarmouth — put  an  end  to 
their  work  in  this  role,  and  compelled  them  to 
confine  their  activities  entirely  to  reconnaissance. 

179 


180          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

It  was  the  great  effectiveness  of  the  long  observa- 
tion flights  from  Tondern  which  determined  the 
B.N.A.S.  to  make  a  strong  endeavour  to  put  an 
end  to  the  menace  by  destroying  the  sheds.  Be- 
sides greatly  hampering  the  British  mine-laying 
program  they  were  also  credited  with  supplying 
the  Germans  with  invaluable  information  for  both 
their  surface  raids  and  submarine  attacks  on  the 
Norwegian  convoys. 

The  only  way  in  which  Tondern  could  be  reached 
was  by  machines  launched  from  a  carrier  ship, 
and  for  this  purpose  the  Furious,  on  account  of  her 
great  speed  and  size,  was  perhaps  better  adapted 
than  even  a  ship  of  the  type  of  the  Argus,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  latter  was  specially  built  for 
the  work,  while  the  former  was  converted  from  a 
cruiser  of  the  Courageous  class.  The  raid,  as 
any  attempt  of  the  kind  must  be,  was  prepared  for 
some  time  in  advance,  and  was  only  launched 
when  it  appeared  that  all  conditions  were  espe- 
cially favourable  for  its  success.  Probably  the 
astonishing  Admiralty  intelligence  service  played 
an  important,  perhaps  a  decisive,  part. 

There  was  one  point  which  favoured  a  raid 
upon  Tondern  as  compared  with  an  air  attack 
upon  one  of  the  stations  farther  south.  This  was 
its  proximity  to  the  Danish  border,  which  offered 
an  alternative  way  of  escape  if  return  to  the  vicin- 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern  181 

ity  of  the  carrier  ship  should  be  impracticable. 
This  was  fully  reckoned  with  in  planning  the  raid, 
for  it  was  well  understood  that  the  presence  of 
numerous  chaser  squadrons  from  the  German 
coastal  seaplane  stations  might  effectually  bar 
the  way  back  to  the  Furious  or  her  escorting  de- 
stroyers. Of  the  raid  from  the  British  stand- 
point I  can  tell  little  or  no  more  than  was  revealed 
in  the  bulletin  issued  by  the  Admiralty  a  few  days 
after  it  took  place.  This  said,  in  effect,  that  a 
number  of  aeroplanes,  launched  from  a  carrier 
ship,  had  carried  out  a  raid  upon  the  Zeppelin 
sheds  at  Tondern  shortly  after  daylight;  that,  in 
spite  of  the  vigorous  anti-aircraft  fire  encountered, 
hits  had  been  observed  upon  at  least  two  of  the 
sheds,  and  that  it  was  believed  that  any  airships 
they  contained  must  have  been  destroyed;  and 
that  some  of  the  pilots  had  been  picked  up  at 
sea,  while  others  had  landed  safely  in  Denmark. 
Two  or  three  were  still  unaccounted  for,  and 
might  have  either  been  lost  in  the  sea  or  been 
taken  prisoner  by  the  enemy.  This  number  was 
subsequently  reduced  to  one,  and  he,  it  was  reck- 
oned, must  have  sunk  with  his  .machine  in  the  sea. 
This  was  all  the  public  were  told  of  what  was 
undoubtedly  the  most  successful  raid  of  its  kind 
ever  carried  out,  except  for  the  usual  more  or  less 
conflicting  versions  from  Denmark  and  Holland. 


182 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


No  one  seemed  to  know  for  certain  whether  any 
Zeppelins  had  been  destroyed  or  not,  and  if  the 
Admiralty  Intelligence  Department  knew,  it  kept 
its  knowledge  to  itself.  The  fact  that  the  British 
mine-laying  squadrons  had,  from  that  time  on, 
less  to  report  of  Zeppelin  activity  in  the  Skager 
Eak  was  encouraging,  however,  and  seemed  to 
show  that  the  Zeppelins  were  being  kept  out  of 
harm's  way. 

Under  the  armistice  agreement  the  Allied  Naval 
Commission  had  the  right  of  visiting  any  of  the 
German  naval  air  stations.  This  gave  them  an 
opportunity  to  see  at  first  hand  what  damage  had 
been  inflicted  in  the  Tondern  raid.  So  one  of  the 
sub-commissions  put  this  station  upon  their 
itinerary.  One  officer  in  particular — he  had  di- 
rected the  raiding  operations  from  the  Furious— 
was  especially  anxious  to  go.  But  luck  was 
against  him,  for  the  destroyer  in  which  he  was 
visiting  the  Borkum  and  Heligoland  stations  was 
delayed  by  fog,  and  he  was  too  late  to  go  with 
the  Tondern  party. 

The  efforts  made  by  the  Germans,  first,  to  pre- 
vent this  Tondern  visit  being  scheduled  at  all,  and, 
after  it  was  decided  upon,  so  to  delay  it  that  the 
party  making  it  should  only  arrive  after  dark  and 
thus  have  limited  opportunities  for  observation, 
were  a  revelation  of  Hun  psychology.  "The 


o 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern  183 

Hun,"  said  an  officer  of  one  of  the  air-station 
parties  on  his  return  to  the  Hercules  one  eve- 
ning, "is  one  of  the  most  truthful  individuals  in 
the  world — just  as  long  as  he  knows  you  are  in 
a  position  to  find  out  the  truth  anyway.  But  if 
he  thinks  he  can  prevent  your  finding  out  the 
truth  by  lying,  there  seems  to  be  no  limit  to  the 
lengths  he  will  go."  Then  he  went  on  to  tell  of 
how  an  unusually  affable  and  courteous  young 
German  flying  officer,  who  had  conducted  his  party 
to  Norderney  two  days  previously,  had  taken 
every  occasion  to  point  out  how  much  trouble,  and 
how  profitless  and  uninteresting  a  visit  to  Ton- 
dern would  be.  He  said  that  the  station  was  a 
long  distance  out  of  the  way,  that  reaching  it 
would  involve  trips  of  some  hours  by  both  train 
and  destroyer,  that  it  was  not  in  a  region  under 
the  control  of  the  Wilhelmshaven  authorities,  and 
that  there  was  nothing  to  see  anyway,  as  the  sheds 
had  been  dismantled  before  they  were  bombed, 
and  that  there  were  no  airships  in  them  at  the 
time  they  were  destroyed.  Pressed  on  the  latter 
point,  he  had  reiterated  the  statement,  adding  that 
the  raid,  though  it  was  well  planned  and  executed, 
had  been  a  great  waste  of  effort.  "It  will  take 
much  time,  and  you  will  see  nothing,  nothing  at  all, 
I  assure  you." 

' '  When  I  told  him, ' '  continued  the  British  officer, 


184 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 


"that  we  would  go  ahead  with  the  visit  for  sen- 
timental reasons,  if  for  no  others,  he  seemed  a 
good  deal  upset,  and  this  morning  he  did  not 
turn  up  at  all.  The  commander  who  came  in 
his  stead  told  me  quite  frankly  that  there  were 
two  Zeppelins  destroyed  at  Tondern,  and  that 
he  was  to  go  in  person  with  the  party  to  see,  as 
he  put  it,  that  it  was  i  properly  received. '  He 
had  such  an  'open-and-above-board'  manner  about 
everything  that  I'm  inclined  to  think  there's  some 
1  catch'  in  his  plan.  It's  probably  on  the  score  of 
time,  or  connections,  or  something  of  that  kind. 
He  says  that,  between  destroyer,  launch,  and 
train,  it  is  an  eight-hour  journey;  but  I  have 
made  up  a  schedule  that  will  give  us  a  good  two 
hours  of  daylight  there  if  there  is  no  slip  up  on 
the  Huns'  end  of  the  arrangements.  We  push 
off  in  the  Viceroy  at  seven  in  the  morning,  and 
ought  to  be  at  Tondern  by  three.  When  we  re- 
join her  again  at  Brunsbiittel's  another  matter." 
Just  where  the  "slip  up"  was  meant  to  come 
became  evident  the  next  morning,  when  the  Ger- 
man pilot  was  half  an  hour  late  in  coming  off  to 
the  Viceroy.  As  the  sixty-mile  run  to  Brunsbiittel 
was  to  have  been  covered  at  a  rate  of  but  fifteen 
miles  an  hour,  a  destroyer  capable  of  doing  close 
to  thirty-five  had  no  difficulty  in  making  up  the 
lost  time,  though  once  she  was  all  but  compelled 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern  185 

to  anchor  on  account  of  fog,  which  closed  down 
just  before  the  outer  Elbe  lightship  was  picked 
up.  The  railway  station,  close  beside  the  gates  of 
the  Kiel  Canal,  was  in  plain  view  from  the  deck 
of  the  Viceroy,  but  the  delay  in  sending  off  the 
promised  tug  to  take  us  to  the  landing,  with  a  fur- 
ther delay  in  the  starting  of  the  waiting  special,  set 
back  our  departure  from  Brunsbiittel  an  hour  be- 
hind the  time  scheduled. 

As  all  the  trains  previously  put  at  the  disposal 
of  the  Allied  Commission  had  been  given  the  right 
of  way  over  everything  else  on  the  line,  we  had 
good  reason  to  believe  that  this  time  might  also 
be  made  up  in  the  course  of  the  run  across  ab- 
solutely level  country  which  separated  us  from 
Tondern.  It  was  little  more  than  one  hundred 
miles.  When,  far  from  making  up  time,  we  con- 
tinued to  lose  it — both  by  waits  at  stations  and  by 
slow  running  between  them — our  mounting  sus- 
picions that  the  Germans  meant  to  keep  us  hang- 
ing about  till  after  dark  seemed  to  be  confirmed. 
A  protest  to  the  Korvettenkapitan  conducting  the 
party  brought  only  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders  and 
the  assertion  that  the  bad  conditions  of  the  track 
and  the  engine  made  greater  speed  too  dangerous. 
As  there  was  no  doubt  that  the  engine  was  clanking 
and  banging  a  good  deal,  and  that  the  bogey  im- 
mediately under  our  compartment  had  at  least 


186 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


one  "flat"  wheel,  about  the  only  reply  we  could 
make  to  this  was  to  point  out  that  the  twelve-car 
train  which  had  just  passed  us  was  doing  at  least 
twice  our  speed. 

"Ah!  but  that  train  had  the  good  engine, " 
was  the  naive  reply.  It  hardly  seemed  worth 
while  asking  why  our  special  had  not  also  been 
provided  with  a  "good"  engine.  Some  sort  of 
directions  were  given  to  the  engineer,  however, 
and  there  was  sufficient  acceleration  of  speed  (at 
the  expense,  it  appeared,  of  cutting  off  the  steam 
heating  the  car)  to  bring  us  into  Tondern  station 
with  something  like  three-quarters  of  an  hour  of 
daylight  still  to  the  good.  This  was  so  contrary 
to  the  plans  of  our  hosts  that  the  train  was  kept 
waiting  in  the  station  for  fifteen  minutes  on  the 
pretext  that  the  party  of  officers  from  the  town 
who  were  to  accompany  us  had  not  yet  arrived. 
The  crowd  on  the  platform,  amongst  which  Danish 
types  predominated,  seemed  to  be  genuinely 
friendly,  but  a  couple  of  Eed  Cross  girls  who 
stepped  forward  to  offer  refreshments  were  waved 
savagely  back  by  an  armed  guard. 

The  ragged  silhouettes  of  the  bombed  sheds 
were  in  plain  sight,  but  a  mile  or  so  distant,  when 
(the  German  officers  having  arrived  and  taken 
their  places  in  a  spare  compartment)  the  train, 
with  much  wheezing  and  clanking,  started  up  again 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern 


187 


and  ran  slowly  out  on  to  the  spur  towards  the 
airship  station.  It  would  be  but  a  few  minutes 
more,  we  told  ourselves,  and  there  would  still  be 
light  enough  to  see  the  general  lay  of  things. 
The  engine  never  increased  its  snail's-pace  of 
three  miles  an  hour  all  the  way,  and  when  it 
came  to  a  stop  at  last,  close  beside  a  towering 
wall  of  steel,  there  was  barely  light  enough  to 
show  the  top  of  the  wall  against  the  dusky,  low- 
hanging  clouds  of  the  early  twilight.  Our  con- 
ductor had  maintained  his  schedule  to  the  minute. 
When  we  alighted  he  was  voluble  in  his  explana- 
tion of  how  the  track  of  the  spur  was  in  such  a 
state  of  disrepair  that  a  greater  speed  would 
have  been  attended  by  the  risk  of  derailment. 
There  was  nothing  that  we  could  say  to  refute  this 
specious  protestation,  until,  on  our  return  journey 
an  hour  or  two  later,  the  engine  (which  had  been 
making  steam  in  the  interim)  whisked  the  two 
cars  over  that  same  spur  at  the  giddy  rate  of 
twenty  miles  an  hour — a  good  six  times  as  fast 
as  we  had  come. 

The  commander  of  the  station,  saying  that,  as 
the  hour  was  late,  we  doubtless  would  desire  to 
get  the  inspection  over  as  quickly  as  possible, 
started  off  into  the  darkness  at  a  brisk  pace,  the 
rest — British,  Americans,  and  Germans — stum- 
bling along  in  pursuit  as  best  they  could.  Enter- 


188  To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ing  the  shed  by  a  side  door  near  which  the  train 
had  stopped,  we  found  it  so  poorly  lighted  that 
the  opposite  wall  showed  but  dimly,  while  the 
ends  and  the  soaring  arches  of  the  roof  were  lost 
in  dusky  obscurity.  At  that  first  glimpse — prob- 
ably the  fresh  smell  of  the  cement  under  foot  and 
the  palpable  newness  of  the  pressed  asbestos  sid- 
ing under  one  of  the  lights  had  something  to  do 
with  it — the  shed  gave  one  the  impression  of  be- 
ing just  on  the  point  of  completion.  The  descrip- 
tion of  the  station  furnished  to  us  mentioned  no 
such  structure,  so  that  we  were  rather  at  a  loss. 
No  explanation  was  volunteered,  however,  and 
our  guide  pushed  on  straight  across,  with  the  evi- 
dent intention  of  passing  out  through  the  op- 
posite door.  But  the  senior  Allied  officer,  an 
American,  of  commander's  rank,  stopped  him  with 
a  request  for  more  light.  Half  a  dozen  switches 
were  then  thrown  over,  and  flooded  the  great  struc- 
ture with  the  brilliant  radiance  of  countless  in- 
candescent globes.  At  once  the  huge  building 
was  revealed  as  a  double  Zeppelin  shed  of  the 
largest  size,  just  at  the  end  of  a  long  spell  of 
restoration  after  being  badly  damaged.  Frag- 
ments of  duraluminum  and  charred  pieces  of  wood 
and  fabric,  swept  together  in  great  heaps  at  the 
sides,  told  more  of  the  story,  and  great  fresh 
patches  at  several  points  in  the  roof  the  rest  of 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern 


189 


it.  This  was  the  shed  in  which  the  two  Zeppelins, 
which  the  Germans  admitted  losing  when  the  sta- 
tion was  bombed  by  the  planes  from  the  Furious, 
had  been  destroyed.  It  was  the  least  damaged 
of  the  sheds  bombed,  said  the  German  com- 
mander, and  it  had  been  rebuilt  with  materials 
from  two  other  sheds  both  of  which  were  in  proc- 
ess of  demolition. 

I  saw  the  Yankee  officer's  eyes  glistening  as  the 
picture  those  words  conjured  up  flashed  before 
them,  and  heard  his  muttered  ' i  Some  raid  that,  by 
cripes!" 

"If  you  are  zatisfied,  ve  vill  now  go  on  to  der 
oder  sheds,"  the  German  commander  said  pres- 
ently, and  we  followed  him  out  into  the  deepening 
twilight. 

Tondern  had  nothing  of  the  regularity  of  plan 
of  Nordholz,  nor,  luckily,  the  latter 's  magnificent 
distances.  We  found  the  two  remaining  sheds,  or 
what  was  left  of  them,  at  less  than  half  a  mile  from 
the  first.  One  was  nothing  but  a  foundation,  with 
prostrate  steel  pillars  and  girders  scattered  about 
over  it,  and  numerous  deep  pools  of  water.  I 
say  deep,  because  it  took  two  of  his  colleagues  to 
fish  out  one  of  the  party  who  stumbled  into  it, 
and  he,  by  the  irony  of  fate,  was  a  stout  German 
officer,  with  a  deep  bass  voice  and  a  magnificent 
vocabulary.  We  had  to  take  the  German 's  word 


190 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


for  it  that  this  shed  had  been  a  small  one,  which 
they  were  demolishing  because  it  had  been  obso- 
lete, and  not  because  it  had  been  damaged  by 
bombs. 

Men  were  at  work  pulling  down  a  section  of  the 
next  shed  as  we  came  up,  but  they  shambled  away 
at  a  word  from  one  of  their  officers.  This  one, 
said  the  station  commander,  was  much  the  worst 
damaged  of  the  two  bombed  in  the  raid,  but,  by 
good  luck,  there  had  been  no  airships  in  it  at 
the  time.  The  reason  that  it  was  more  badly 
knocked  to  pieces  than  the  other,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that,  in  the  latter,  the  explosion  of  the  Zep- 
pelins was  added  to  that  of  the  bombs,  was  due 
to  its  doors  having  been  tightly  closed.  This  had 
caused  the  full  force  of  the  exploding  bombs 
to  be  exerted  against  the  walls  and  roof  of  the 
shed,  whereas,  in  the  first  one,  much  of  that  force 
had  been  dissipated  through  the  open  front  of  the 
structure. 

Save  a  flare  or  two  by  which  the  men  had  been 
working,  there  was  no  lights  in  this  shed,  but, 
picking  our  way  over  heaps  of  broken  glass  and 
asbestos  sheeting,  we  managed  to  find  a  point 
from  which  the  tangled  and  twisted  girders  of  a 
still  undemolished  section  of  the  roof  were  sil- 
houetted against  a  stratum  of  western  clouds,  yet 
bright  in  the  last  of  the  sunset  glow.  For  the 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern  191 

most  part  they  bulged  outward,  where  the  up- 
gush  of  the  explosion  had  exerted  its  force  against 
the  roof,  but  in  two  places  they  bent  sharply  in- 
ward, and  ended  in  jagged  bars  of  torn  metal. 
These  were  the  places,  the  Germans  told  us,  where 
two  of  the  bombs  burst  through.  One  of  them 
explained  the  remarkable  fact  of  the  great  holes 
being  almost  exactly  in  a  line  down  the  middle 
of  the  roof  by  saying:  "Poof !  they  fly  so  low 
they  could  not  miss.  Any  airman  could  do  that. 
But  they  did  miss  with  one  bomb,  though,"  he 
said,  brightening.  "Come  mit  me.  I  show  you," 
and  he  led  the  way  to  a  spot  forty  or  fifty  feet 
in  front  of  the  wrecked  building,  where  his  elec- 
tric torch  revealed  a  round  hole  in  the  earth 
about  five  feet  in  diameter  by  four  feet  deep.  "I 
think  that  bomb  miss  der  top  of  der  shed  by  one 
half -metre,"  he  said,  sighting  along  his  out- 
stretched arm  at  what  was  evidently  reckoned  the 
angle  of  a  bomb  from  a  low-flying  machine. 
"Yes,  it  miss  der  shed  by  half  a  metre;  but  it 
kills  five  men  chust  der  same.  Not  so  bad  after 
all,  perhapds."  Your  Hun  officer  is  ever  a  cold- 
blooded reckoner,  and  one  of  the  reasons  he  is  so 
useful  is  that  he  never  lets  sentiment  blur  his 
perspective. 

From  various  things  heard  and  seen  in  the 
course  of  that  hurried  night  visit  of  inspection 


192          To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

to  Tondern  it  would  have  been  possible  to  piece 
out  a  fairly  accurate  picture  of  how  the  great 
raid  must  have  appeared  to  the  Germans  stationed 
there  at  the  time.  It  will  be  better,  however,  to 
set  down  a  brief  resume  of  the  connected  account 
I  heard  at  Nordholz  from  Von  Butlar,  Germany's 
most  famous  surviving  airship  pilot,  who  had,  as 
will  be  seen,  good  reason  for  remembering  what 
occurred  on  that  eventful  morning. 

Von  Butlar 's  1  chief  claim  to  distinction  is  his 
notable  long-distance  flights,  the  most  remark- 
able of  which  was  in  connection  with  an  attempt 
to  carry  medical  supplies  to  General  Von  Letow 
in  German  East  Africa.  The  German  European 
forces  there  were  being  decimated  by  malaria  at 
the  time,  and  Von  Letow  had  sent  word  by  wire- 
less that  unless  a  supply  of  quinine  reached  him 
by  a  certain  date  he  would  be  unable  to  carry  on. 
As  this  campaign  was  diverting  far  too  much  Brit- 
ish effort  for  the  Germans  to  let  it  come  to  an  end 

i  Since  returning  to  England  I  have  received  information 
which,  while  confirming  the  fact  that  he  commanded  "L-59"  when 
it  was  commissioned,  makes  it  probable  that  Von  Butlar  was 
transferred  to  another  Zeppelin  before  the  East  African  flight 
was  attempted.  A  pilot  by  the  name  of  Bugholz  is  believed  to 
have  been  in  command  on  that  occasion.  Although  Von  Butlar Js 
representation  of  himself  as  the  hero  of  the  remarkable  African 
flight  appears  to  have  been  a  case  of  pure  "swank,"  there  is  every 
reason  to  believe  that  his  account  of  the  Tondern  raid  is  sub- 
stantially correct. — L.  R.  F. 


BIRD'S-EYE  VIEW  OF  KIEL 


IN   KIEL  DOCKYARD 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern 


193 


while  any  card  still  remained  to  be  played,  it  was 
decided  to  make  an  attempt  to  send  relief  by  Zep- 
pelin. A  rendezvous  was  arranged,,  and  after 
some  delay  an  airship,  under  Von  Butlar 's  com- 
mand, was  dispatched  from  a  station  in  Bulgaria, 
the  nearest  practicable  point  from  which  a  start 
could  be  made.  The  delay  alone  caused  the  fail- 
ure of  the  boldly  conceived  project,  for,  flying 
without  a  hitch  of  any  kind,  Von  Butlar  had  al- 
ready crossed  the  Mediterranean,  Lower  and  Up- 
per Egypt,  and  was  well  over  the  Sudan  when 
Von  Letow  informed  him  by  wireless  that  the 
British  had  occupied  the  point  where  he  was  to 
have  landed,  and  that,  as  it  was  not  practicable 
to  rendezvous  with  him  in  a  sufficiently  open  region 
elsewhere,  it  would  be  best  for  him  to  return 
home.  This  remarkable  feat  was  successfully  ac- 
complished, Von  Butlar  bringing  his  airship  safely 
to  earth  at  a  point  on  the  Turkish  shores  of  the 
Black  Sea. 

A  scarcely  less  remarkable  flight  was  one  in 
which  Von  Butlar  claimed  to  have  crossed  the 
North  Sea  to  near  the  Yorkshire  coast,  to  have 
passed  north  in  sight  of  Eosyth,  Invergordon, 
and  Scapa  Flow,  to  have  flown  across  to  Norway, 
gaining  useful  information  respecting  convoy  and 
patrol  movements,  and  back  to  his  home  station  at 
Tondern  or  Nordholz.  The  Admiralty,  which  had 


194 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 


some  information  about  this  latter  flight,  had 
credited  Von  Butlar  with  having  been  in  the  air 
104  hours,  but  he  assured  several  members  of 
the  Commission  that  the  actual  time  was  little 
short  of  six  days.  He  also  claimed  to  have  taken 
a  useful  photograph  of  the  Grand  Fleet  at  anchor 
at  Scapa  Flow. 

At  the  time  of  the  Tondern  raid,  Von  Butlar  was 
flying  from  there,  one  of  the  two  Zeppelins  de- 
stroyed being  that  which  he  commanded.  As  he 
speaks  little,  if  any,  English,  the  following  ac- 
count is  a  free  translation  of  the  story  he  related 
to  us  in  German  of  what  occurred  on  that  occa- 
sion. "We  always  recognized,"  he  said,  "from 
the  time  that  we  learned  that  the  British  were  de- 
veloping swift  flying-machine  carriers,  that  Ton- 
dern was  especially  vulnerable  to  an  attack  of  this 
kind,  and  we  prepared  against  it  as  best  we  could. 
We  had  expected,  however,  that  it  would  come  in 
the  form  of  a  raid  by  seaplanes,  which  would,  of 
course,  have  been  comparatively  heavy  and  slow, 
and  which  would  have  had  to  return  to  the  sea 
to  land,  and  against  these  our  defence  would  prob- 
ably have  been  effective.  Where  we  deceived  our- 
selves was  in  underrating  the  risks  that  your 
men  were  willing  to  take,  such  as,  for  instance, 
that  of  landing  in  the  sea  in  an  ordinary  aeroplane 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern 


195 


on  the  chance  of  being  picked  up  in  the  compara- 
tively short  time  such  a  machine  will  float. " 

"We  were  not  prepared  for  such  a  raid  at  any 
time,  but  especially  at  the  moment  at  which  it 
occurred.  We  had  had  a  protecting  flight  of  light 
fighting  aeroplanes  at  Tondern,  but  the  landing 
ground  had  never  been  properly  levelled.  There 
had  been  many  accidents,  and  a  number  of  the 
machines  were  always  disabled.  This  trouble  be- 
came so  bad  toward  the  middle  of  last  summer  that 
it  was  finally  decided  to  withdraw  the  protecting 
flight,  which  was  badly  needed  at  the  moment  else- 
where, until  the  landing  ground  had  been  im- 
proved. As  usual,  your  Admiralty  seem  to  have 
learned  of  this  within  a  few  hours  and  to  have 
decided  to  take  advantage  of  it  at  once.  From  the 
way  your  machines  were  flying  when  they  ap- 
peared, I  am  practically  certain  that  they  felt 
sure  of  being  opposed  by  nothing  worse  than  gun- 
fire. 

"We  received  warning,  of  course,  when  the 
raiding  planes  were  still  over  the  sea,  but,  unless 
some  of  the  machines  at  once  sent  up  from  the 
coastal  stations  could  stop  them,  there  was  noth- 
ing for  us  to  do  but  to  give  them  the  warmest 
reception  we  could  with  the  anti-aircraft  guns, 
in  which  we  were  fairly  strong.  Our  gunners 


196 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


were  well  trained,  and  if  your  planes  had  kept 
high,  as  they  would  have  done  if  they  had  been 
expecting  a  strong  attack  by  a  superior  force  of 
protecting  machines,  they  would  most  probably 
have  been  prevented  from  doing  much  harm,  in- 
stead of  just  about  wiping  the  station  off  the  map, 
as  they  did. 

4  *  When  we  had  the  warning,  most  of  those 
without  special  duties  went  to  the  abri,  which  had 
been  provided  at  all  stations  for  use  in  case  of 
raids.  But  I  was  so  concerned  over  the  danger  to 
my  own  ship  that  I  remained  outside.  It  was 
quite  light  by  the  time  they  appeared.  At  first 
they  were  flying  high,  but  while  they  were  still 
small  specks  I  saw  them  begin  to  plane  down,  as 
though  following  a  pre-arranged  plan.  It  was  all 
over  in  a  minute  or  two  after  that.  Part  of  them 
headed  for  one  shed  and  part  for  the  other.  Div- 
ing with  their  engines  all  out — or  so  it  seemed 
— they  came  over  with  the  combined  speed  from 
their  drop  and  the  pull  of  their  propellers.  Down 
they  came,  till  they  seemed  to  be  going  to  ram 
the  sheds.  Then,  one  after  another,  they  flat- 
tened out  and  passed  lengthwise  over  their  targets 
at  a  height  of  about  forty  metres,  kicking  loose 
bombs  as  they  went. 

"Our  guns  simply  had  no  chance  at  all  with 
them.  In  fact,  one  of  the  guns  came  pretty  near 


The  Bombing  of  Tondern  197 

to  getting  knocked  out  itself.    It  was  so  reckless  a 


piece  of  work  that  I  couldn't  help  noticing  it,  even 
while  my  own  airship  was  beginning  to  burst  into 
flames.  One  of  the  pilots,  it  seems,,  must  have 
found  that  he  had  a  bomb  or  two  left  at  about 
the  same  time  he  spotted  the  position  of  one  of 
the  guns  that  was  firing  at  him.  Banking  steeply, 
round  he  came,  dived  straight  at  the  battery,  let- 
ting go  a  bomb  as  his  sight  came  on  when  he  was 
no  more  than  fifteen  metres  above  it.  Then  he 
waved  his  hand  and  dashed  off  after  the  other  ma- 
chines, which  were  already  scattering  to  avoid  the 
German  planes  beginning  to  converge  on  them 
from  all  directions.  It  was  one  of  the  finest  ex- 
amples of  nerve  I  ever  saw. 

"The  precaution  we  had  taken  of  opening  the 
doors  of  the  main  shed  saved  it  from  total  de- 
struction, for  the  airships,  instead  of  exploding, 
only  burned  comparatively  slowly;  but  Tondern, 
as  an  air  station,  had  practically  ceased  to  exist 
from  that  moment." 


VIII 

THROUGH    THE    CANAL.   TO   THE   BALTIC 

THE  Hercules  and  her  four  escorting  destroyers 
(the  latter  having  been  scattered  during  the  last 
few  days  to  various  ports  and  air  stations  in  con- 
nection with  the  inspection  being  pushed  all  along 
the  German  North  Sea  coast)  were  to  have 
rendezvoused  at  Brunsbiittel  by  dark  of  the  10th, 
in  order  to  be  ready  to  start  through  the  Kiel 
Canal  at  daybreak  the  following  morning.  At 
the  appointed  time,  however,  only  the  Viceroy, 
which  had  pushed  through  that  morning  with  the 
"air"  party  en  route  to  the  Zeppelin  station  at 
Tondern,  was  on  hand.  The  Hercules,  which  had 
got  under  weigh  from  Wilhelmshaven  during  the 
forenoon,  reported  that  she  had  been  compelled 
to  anchor  off  the  Elbe  estuary  on  account  of  the 
thickness  of  the  fog,  and  the  Verdun,  coming  on 
from  her  visit  to  Borkum  and  Heligoland,  had 
been  delayed  from  a  similar  cause.  The  Vidette 
and  Venetia,  which  were  helping  the  "shipping" 
and  "warship"  parties  get  around  the  harbours  of 
Bremen  and  Hamburg,  signalled  that  their  work 

198 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     199 

was  still  uncompleted  and  that  they  would  have 
to  proceed  later  to  Kiel  "on  their  own." 

Returning  to  Brunsbiittel  from  the  Tondern 
visit  well  along  toward  midnight,  the  absence  of 
the  Hercules  compelled  the  four  of  us  who  had 
made  that  arduous  journey  in  the  Viceroy  (the 
accommodations  in  the  "VV  appear  to  be  as 
elastic  as  the  good  nature  of  their  officers  is  bound- 
less), to  spend  the  night  aboard,  and  the  impossi- 
bility of  rejoining  our  own  ships  in  the  morning 
was  responsible  for  the  fact  that  we  continued 
with  her — the  first  British  destroyer  to  pass 
through  the  Kaiser  Wilhelm  Canal — on  to  Kiel. 
It  was  a  passage  as  memorable  as  historic. 

An  improving  visibility  toward  morning  en- 
abled the  Hercules  to  get  under  weigh  again  be- 
fore daybreak,  and  in  the  first  grey  light  of  the 
winter  dawn  she  came  nosing  past  us  and  on  up 
to  the  entrance  of  the  canal.  At  each  end  of  the 
latter  there  are  two  locks — lying  side  by  side — 
for  both  i '  outgoing ' '  and  ' '  incoming ' '  ships.  The 
right-side  one  of  the  "incoming"  pair  was  re- 
served for  the  Hercules,  while  the  other  was  kept 
clear  for  the  Regensburg — flying  Admiral  Goette's 
flag — and  the  two  British  destroyers.  The  differ- 
ence in  level  between  the  canal  and  the  waters  of 
the  Elbe,  varying  considerably  with  the  tide,  is 
only  a  few  feet  at  most,  and  the  locking  through, 


200 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules 


as  a  consequence,   only  the  matter  of  minutes. 

The  Hercules  and  Eegensburg  were  already  in 
their  respective  locks  as  the  Viceroy,  with  the 
Verdun  half  a  cable's  length  astern,  came  gliding 
up  out  of  the  fog,  the  former  already  beginning 
to  show  her  great  bulk  above  the  side  as  she  lifted 
with  the  in-pouring  water.  The  attention  of  the 
score  or  so  of  Germans  standing  on  the  wall  be- 
tween the  locks  was  centred,  not  on  the  Hercules, 
as  one  might  have  expected,  but  on  the  Eeg ens- 
burg,  the  most  of  them  being  gathered  in  a  ges- 
ticulative  group  abreast  the  latter 's  bow.  The 
reason  for  this  we  saw  presently. 

The  handling  of  the  British  destroyers  on  this 
occasion  was  one  of  the  smartest  things  of  the 
kind  I  ever  saw.  Indeed,  under  the  circum- 
stances, * '  spectacular  "  is  a  fitter  word  to  describe 
it  than  " smart."  Without  reducing  the  speed 
of  her  engines  by  a  revolution,  the  Viceroy  con- 
tinued right  on  into  the  narrow  water-lane  of  the 
lock  at  the  same  pace  as  she  had  approached  its 
entrance.  Certainly  she  was  doing  ten  knots, 
and  probably  a  good  bit  over  that.  On  into  the 
still  more  restricted  space  between  the  Regensburg 
and  the  right  side  of  the  dock  she  drove,  while 
the  waterside  loafers — scenting  a  smash — grinned 
broadly  in  anticipation  of  the  humiliation  of  the 
Englanders.  Straight  at  the  loftily  looming  lock 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     201 

gate  she  drove,  and  I  remember  distinctly  seeing 
men  who  were  crossing  the  canal  on  the  bridge 
made  by  the  folded  flaps  break  into  a  run  to 
avoid  the  imminent  crash.  And  she  never  did 
slow  down;  she  stopped.  While  there  was  still 
a  score  of  yards  to  go  the  captain  threw  the 
engine-room  telegraph  over  to  "Stop!"  and 
"Half-Speed  Astern!"  and,  straining  like  a  dog 
in  leash  as  the  reversed  propellers  killed  her  head- 
way, stop  she  did.  The  superlative  finesse  of  the 
thing  (for  they  had  seen  something  before  of  the 
handling  of  ships  in  narrow  places)  fairly  swept 
the  gathering  dock-side  vultures  off  their  feet  with 
astonishment,  and  one  little  knot  of  sailors  all 
but  broke  into  a  cheer.  Then  the  Verdun  came 
dashing  up  and  repeated  the  same  spectacular 
manoeuvre  in  our  wake;  only,  instead  of  bringing 
up  a  few  feet  short  of  the  lock  gates,  it  was  the 
stern  of  the  Viceroy,  with  its  festoon  of  poised 
depth-charges,  that  her  axe-like  bow  backed  away 
from  after  nosing  up  close  enough  to  sniff,  if  not  to 
scratch,  the  paint. 

"  You  Ve  impressed  the  Huns  right  enough,  sir," 
I  remarked  to  the  captain  as  he  rang  down,  "Fin- 
ished with  the  Engines,"  and  turned  to  descend 
the  ladder  of  the  bridge;  "but  wasn't  it  just  a 
bit—" 

"Yes,  it  was  rather  slow,"  he  cut  in  apologetic- 


202 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


ally  in  answer  to  what  he  thought  I  was  going  to 
say;  "but  I  didn't  dare  to  take  any  chances  of 
coming  a  cropper  in  strange  waters.  Now,  if  it 
had  been  the  'Pen'  at  Eosyth,  we  might  have 
shown  them  what  one  of  the  little  old  *  W  can 
do  when  it  comes  to  a  pinch. " 

At  the  time  I  thought  he  was  joking — that  I  had 
seen  the  extreme  limit  that  morning  of  the  i  i  handi- 
ness"  of  the  modern  destroyer.  But  the  Viceroy, 
astonishing  as  that  performance  had  been,  still 
had  something  up  her  sleeve.  A  week  later,  in 
the  fog-shrouded  entrance  to  Kiel  Fiord,  where  a 
slip  would  have  been  a  good  deal  more  serious 
matter  than  the  telescoping  of  a  bow  on  a  lock 
gate,  I  saw  how  much. 

From  the  vantage  of  the  bridge  I  saw,  just  be- 
fore descending  for  breakfast,  what  it  had  been 
that  had  deflected  the  attention  of  the  lock-side 
loafers  from  the  Hercules  to  the  Regensburg. 
That  most  graceful  of  light  cruisers  had  paid 
the  penalty  of  being  left  with  a  most  disgraceful 
crew.  She  had  rammed  the  lock  gate  full  and 
square,  and — from  the  look  of  her  bows — while 
she  still  had  a  good  deal  of  way  on.  We  had 
remarked  especially  the  trim  lissomeness  of  those 
bows  when  she  met  us  off  the  Jade  on  the  day  the 
Hercules  arrived  in  German  waters.  And  now 
the  sharp  stem  was  bent  several  feet  to  port, 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     203 

while  all  back  along  her  "  flare "  the  buckled  plat- 
ing heaved  in  undulant  corrugations  like  the  hide 
on  the  neck  of  an  old  bull  rhino.  As  it  was  the 
kind  of  repair  that  would  take  a  month  or  more 
in  dock  to  effect,  there  was  nothing  for  the  Ger- 
mans to  do  but  go  on  using  her  as  she  was.  Luck- 
ily, she  did  not  appear  to  be  making  much  water. 
She  followed  us  through  the  canal  without  diffi- 
culty, and — as  the  days  when  she  would  be  called 
on  to  shake  out  her  thirty  knots  were  gone  for 
ever — it  is  probable  that  she  served  Admiral 
Goette  as  well  for  a  flagship  as  any  other  of  her 
undamaged  sisters  would  have.  But  they  were 
never  able  to  smooth  out  her  '  '  brow  of  care ' '  dur- 
ing all  our  stay  in  German  waters ;  indeed,  I  shall 
be  greatly  surprised  if  (to  use  the  expressive  term 
I  heard  a  bluejacket  in  the  Viceroy  apply  to  it  that 
morning)  she  does  not  come  poking  that  "  cauli- 
flower nose"  in  front  of  her  when  she  is  finally 
handed  over  for  internment  at  Scapa. 

Although  they  would  be  dwarfed  beside  such 
great  structures  as  the  Pedro  Miguel  or  Gatun 
locks  of  the  Panama  Canal,  the  locks  at  Bruns- 
biittel  are  fine  solid  works,  displaying  on  every 
hand  evidences  of  the  great  attention  which  had 
been  given  to  providing  for  their  rapid  opera- 
tion under  pressure,  as  when  the  High  Sea  Fleet 
was  being  rushed  through  from  the  Baltic  to  the 


204 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


North  Sea.  Having  been  enlarged  primarily  to 
"double  the  strength  of  the  German  Fleet,"  ex- 
pense had  not  mattered  in  the  way  it  would  have 
had  the  canal  been  expected  to  justify  itself  com- 
mercially. The  merchant  traffic  of  the  waterway 
for  many  years  to  come  would  not  have  de- 
manded the  double  locks  at  either  end ;  but  naval 
exigencies  called  for  speedy  operation  at  any 
cost,  and  they  were  built. 

Everything  about  the  locks  was  in  extremely 
good  repair.  Even  the  great  agate  and  onyx 
mosaic  of  the  name  KAISER  WILHELM  KANAL,  set 
between  the  double-headed  eagles  of  the  Imperial 
arms,  was  swept  and  polished  to  display  it  to 
best  advantage.  The  locks  were  only  the  front 
window  display,  however,  for  the  badly  eroded 
banks  of  the  canal  itself  testified  to  the  same  lack 
of  maintenance  as  the  railways  were  suffering 
from.  As  our  pilot  reported  that  the  revolution- 
ists had  spent  the  night  obliterating  all  the  Im- 
perial names — such  as  Kaiser  sir  asse  and  Kron- 
printzstrasse — in  Brunsbuttel,  one  felt  safe  in  as- 
suming that  the  gaudy  mosaic  on  the  lock  wall 
had  been  furbished  as  a  decoration,  not  as  a  sym- 
bol. 

The  Hercules,  having  been  raised  to  the  proper 
level,  was  locked  out  into  the  canal,  along  which 
she  proceeded  at  the  steady  six-knot  speed  laid 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     205 

down  as  the  limit  not  to  be  exceeded  by  ships 
of  her  size.  Although  of  considerably  less  dis- 
placement than  a  number  of  the  largest  of  the 
German  capital  ships,  she  was  of  greater  draught 
than  any  of  these,  and  even  the  burning  of  several 
hundred  tons  of  coal  in  the  voyage  from  Eosyth 
still  left  her  drawing  slightly  more  than  the  thirty 
odd  feet  that  the  German  naval  command  had 
set  as  the  limit.  This  had  been  figured  out  in 
advance,  however,  and  an  oiling  all  round  of  the 
destroyers  before  leaving  Wilhelmshaven  had 
brought  her  up  just  the  few  inches  necessary  to 
making  the  passage  without  inflicting  injury  to 
herself  or  to  the  canal. 

The  Hercules  had  traversed  about  a  mile  of  the 
canal  before  the  Viceroy  was  locked  out  to  follow 
in  her  wake,  and  something  like  that  interval  was 
preserved  throughout  most  of  the  passage.  The 
Verdun  kept  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  astern  of 
the  Viceroy,  with  the  Regensburg — but  so  far  back 
as  to  be  out  of  sight — bringing  up  the  rear.  Two 
squat  patrol  launches — one  on  either  quarter,  a 
couple  of  hundred  yards  astern — followed  the 
Hercules  all  the  way,  but  for  just  what  purpose 
we  could  not  make  out. 

For  the  first  few  miles  the  country  on  either 
side  of  the  canal  was  of  the  same  low-lying  nature 
as  that  through  which  all  of  our  railway  journeys 


206 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


from  Wilhelmshaven  had  been  made.  Ditched 
and  dyked  marshland  alternated  with  stretches  of 
bog  and  broad  sheets  of  stagnant  water  where 
the  drainage  system  had  proved  unequal  to  carry- 
ing off  the  overflow  in  the  inundations  following 
the  winter  rains.  Cultivation  was  at  a  standstill 
here,  probably  until  the  water-logged  soil  dried 
out  in  the  spring.  Like  the  East  Frisian  pen- 
insula, the  region  was  essentially  a  grazing  rather 
than  an  agricultural  one,  and  the  farmers  were 
paying  the  penalty  of  having  broken  up  grass- 
land that  was  only  dry  enough  for  cultivation 
during  a  few  months  of  the  year.  Cattle  were 
scarce,  sheep  scarcer,  and  such  of  the  inhabitants 
as  were  visible  around  the  dismal  farmsteads  had 
the  dull,  purposeless  air  of  people  with  nothing 
to  do  and  plenty  of  time  to  do  it  in. 

As  we  fared  inland  only  the  gradually  heighten- 
ing banks  told  that  the  country  was  increasing  in 
elevation.  Ponds  and  bogs  were  still  frequent, 
and  it  was  not  until  the  first  low  hills  were  reached 
that  there  appeared  to  be  enough  drainage  for 
the  land  to  shake  itself  free  of  water.  Here  the 
country  took  on  a  more  cheerful  aspect,  due  prin- 
cipally to  the  fact  that  the  people,  many  of  whom 
were  working,  seemed  less  " bogged  down"— 
mentally  and  physically — than  their  countrymen 
in  the  water-logged  areas  near  the  sea.  Most  of 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     207 

them  were  capable  of  recognizing  us  as  Allied  war- 
ships (something  which  few  of  the  others  appeared 
to  have  done),  and  when  this  had  sunk  home  they 
usually  hurried  down  to  the  bank  of  the  canal  for 
a  closer  view.  Most  of  these  isolated  farming 
people  were  undemonstrative,  and  it  was  not  un- 
til the  more  sophisticated  inhabitants  of  the  vil- 
lages and  towns  were  encountered  that  women  and 
children  were  seen  to  wave  their  hands  and  men 
to  doff  their  hats  and  bow.  Most  of  the  popula- 
tion, both  agricultural  and  industrial,  is  found 
toward  the  Kiel  rather  than  the  Brunsbiittel  end 
of  the  canal. 

At  one  point  we  came  upon  two  men  and  a  girl 
feverishly  engaged  in  skinning  a  horse,  which 
appeared  to  have  dropped  dead  in  the  furrow. 
Or  rather,  they  had  already  skinned  it  and  were 
busy  cutting  up  the  carcass.  Watching  through 
my  glass  from  the  bridge  of  the  Viceroy,  I  saw  all 
three  of  them  rush  helter-skelter  over  a  hill  and 
out  of  sight  as  the  Hercules  came  abreast  of  them, 
only  to  hurry  back  and  resume  their  grisly  work 
when  she  had  disappeared  around  a  bend  just 
ahead.  When  they  again  took  to  their  heels  on 
sighting  the  Viceroy,  I  asked  the  pilot  what  they 
were  afraid  of.  The  law  required,  he  replied, 
that  the  authorities  should  be  notified  of  the  death 
of  any  head  of  live  stock  in  order  that  the  meat  (in 


208          To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

case  it  was  deemed  fit  for  human  consumption) 
should  be  distributed  through  the  regular  ration- 
ing channels.  These  people,  he  thought,  were  in 
the  act  of  stealing  their  own  dead  horse,  and 
doubtless  their  guilty  consciences  made  them  fear 
they  would  be  reported  and  delivered  up  to  jus- 
tice. 

Since  witnessing  this  incident  I  have  found 
myself  rather  less  inclined  to  dwell  in  retrospect 
on  that  huge,  juicy  "  beef  steak "  I  had  devoured 
with  such  gusto  when  it  was  the  piece  de  resistance 
on  the  menu  of  our  luncheon  at  the  Nordholz  Zep- 
pelin station  a  couple  of  days  previously. 

Through  the  low  country  the  construction  of  the 
canal  had  evidently  been  only  a  matter  of  dredg- 
ing, but  the  multiplication  in  size  and  number  of 
the  "dumps"  as  the  elevation  increased  showed 
that  there  had  been  places  where  digging  on  an 
extensive  scale  had  been  necessary,  especially  in 
connection  with  the  widening  and  deepening  op- 
erations. The  fact  that  most  of  the  "dumps" 
appeared  to  consist  of  earth  of  a  very  loose  and 
sandy  nature,  some  of  them  so  much  so  that  they 
had  been  planted  thickly  with  young  trees  to  pre- 
vent their  being  shifted  by  the  winds,  showed  that 
the  excavation  problem  had  been  a  comparatively 
simple  one,  more  of  the  nature  of  that  at  Suez 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     209 

ian  Panama,  where  so  much  of  the  way  had  to 
be  blasted  through  solid  rock. 

The  looseness  of  the  earth  had  made  it  necessary 
to  cut  the  banks  at  as  low  an  angle  as  forty-five 
degrees  in  places  to  prevent  caving,  and  at  these 
points  the  under-water  part  of  the  channel  was 
faced  with  roughly  cut  stone  to  minimize  erosion. 
As  this  work  was  only  carried  a  few  feet  above 
the  surface  of  the  water,  it  required  but  slight 
speed  on  the  part  of  a  large  ship  to  produce  a 
wave  high  enough  to  splash  over  on  to  the  un- 
protected earth  and  bring  it  down  in  slides.  This 
had  doubtless  happened  very  often  in  the  course  of 
the  frequent  shuttling  to  and  fro  of  the  High  Sea 
Fleet,  for  the  stonework  was  heavily  undermined 
in  many  places,  with  few  signs  to  indicate  that 
much  had  been  done  in  the  way  of  repairs. 

Except  in  the  locks  (and  even  there  the  con- 
crete was  cracking  badly  in  places,  particularly  at 
the  Kiel  end),  the  canal  shows  many  evidences  of 
the  haste  of  its  construction  and  the  serious  de- 
terioration it  has  suffered  from  heavy  use  and 
poor  maintenance.  It  will  require  much  money 
and  labour  to  put  it  in  proper  condition,  and 
neither  of  these  is  likely  to  be  over  plentiful  in 
Germany  for  some  years  to  come. 

Our  first  glimpse  of  Allied  prisoners  in  their 


210 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


"natural  habitat "  occurred  at  a  point  about 
twenty  miles  inland  from  Brunsbiittel,  where  a 
new  and  very  lofty  railway  viaduct  was  being 
thrown  across  the  canal.  The  extensive  groups  of 
huts  along  the  bank  in  the  shadow  of  the  half-com- 
pleted final  span  of  steel  looked,  from  the  distance, 
like  ordinary  workmen's  quarters.  As  we  drew 
nearer,  however,  broad  belts  of  barbed  wire  sur- 
rounding those  on  the  right  side  suggested  that 
they  were  used  as  a  prison  camp  even  before  our 
glasses  had  revealed  the  motley  clad  group  on 
the  bank  waving  to  the  Hercules.  As  the  Viceroy 
came  abreast  the  excited  and  constantly  augment- 
ing crowd,  we  saw  that  the  uniforms  were  mostly 
French  and  Russian,  though  there  were  three  or 
four  men  in  the  grey  of  Italy  and  at  least  one  with 
the  unmistakable  cap  of  the  Serbs.  A  hulking 
chap  in  khaki,  whom  I  was  making  the  object  of 
an  especially  close  scrutiny  on  the  chance  that  he 
might  be  British  or  American,  put  an  end  to 
doubt  by  slapping  his  chest  resoundingly  and  an- 
nouncing proudly,  "Je  suis  Beige!"  From  the 
fact  that  they  were  all  in  good  spirits,  we  took  it 
that  they  were  getting  enough  to  eat  and  that 
prospects  for  repatriation  were  favourable. 

We  had  quite  given  up  hope  of  sighting  any 
British  when  suddenly,  from  behind  a  barbed- 
wire  barrier  fencing  off  the  last  groups  of  huts, 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     211 

rang  out  a  cry  of  "  'Ow's  oP  Blighty  1"  Sweep- 
ing my  glass  round  to  the  quarter  from  whence 
the  query  came,  I  focussed  on  a  phiz  which,  de- 
spite its  mask  of  lather,  I  should  have  recognized 
as  Cockney  just  as  surely  in  Korea  or  Katmandu 
as  on  the  banks  of  the  Kiel  Canal.  Waving  his 
brush  jauntily  in  response  to  the  salvo  of  de- 
lighted howls  boomed  out  by  the  bluejackets  lin- 
ing the  starboard  rail,  he  turned  back  to  the  little 
pocket  mirror  on  the  side  of  the  hut  and  resumed 
his  interrupted  shave. 

"Can  you  beat  that,  I  ask  you?"  gasped  an 
American  Flying  officer  who  had  just  clambered 
up  to  the  bridge.  "Here  it  is  the  first  time  that 
'  Tommy '  has  seen  his  country's  flag  in  anywhere 
from  one  to  four  years;  and  yet,  even  when  he 
must  know  he  could  get  a  lift  home  for  the  asking, 
all  he  does  is  to — go  on  scraping  his  face!  I 
say,  can  you  beat  it  V ' 

The  captain  did  not  reply,  but  his  indulgent 
grin  indicated  a  sympathetic  understanding  of 
"British  repressiveness." 

But  if  this  particular  "Tommy "  had  been  some- 
what casual  in  his  greeting,  there  was  nothing  to 
complain  of  on  that  score  in  the  reception  given 
us  by  the  next  British  prisoners  we  encountered, 
a  few  miles  further  along.  The  incident — one  of 
the  most  dramatic  of  the  visit — occurred  just  after 


212          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

the  Hercules  had  passed  under  the  great  railway 
viaduct  which  crosses  the  canal  almost  midway 
between  Brunsbiittel  and  Kiel.  Wherever  prac- 
ticable, I  might  explain,  all  railways  have  been 
carried  across  the  canal  at  a  height  sufficient  to 
allow  even  the  lofty  topmasts  of  the  German  war- 
ships to  pass  under  by  a  comfortable  margin. 
Not  one  of  the  several  viaducts  runs  much  under 
two  hundred  feet  above  the  canal,  and  to  attain 
this  height  at  an  easy  grade  long  approaches  have 
been  necessary.  Some  of  these — partly  steel 
trestle,  partly  embankment — stretched  beyond 
eyescope  to  left  and  right;  but  at  the  viaduct 
in  question  the  ascent  was  made  by  means  of 
two  great  spiral  loops  at  either  end. 

A  segment  of  the  loop  on  the  left  ran  close  be- 
side the  canal  in  the  form  of  a  steep  embankment, 
and  as  the  Hercules  glided  under  the  viaduct  I 
saw  (we  had  closed  up  to  within  a  few  hundred 
yards  of  her  at  the  time)  a  long  train  of  passenger 
cars,  drawn  by  two  puffing  engines,  just  beginning 
the  heavy  climb.  Suddenly  I  caught  the  flash  of 
what  I  took  to  be  a  red  flag  being  wildly  waved 
from  one  of  the  car  windows,  and  I  was  just  start- 
ing to  tell  the  captain  that  we  were  about  to  pass 
a  trainload  of  revolutionaries  when  the  gust  of 
a  mighty  cheer  swept  along  the  waters  to  us  and 
set  the  radio  aerials  ringing  above  my  head. 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     213 

You  can't  tell  me  that's  a  'Bolshie'  yell,"  ob- 
served the  American  officer  decisively.  '  *  Nothing 
but  Yanks  or  Tommies  could  cough  up  a  roar  like 
that,  believe  me." 

Then  I  saw  that  all  the  canal- ward  sides  of  the 
dozen  or  more  coaches  were  wriggling  with  khaki 
arms  and  shoulders  (for  all  the  world  as  though  a 
great  two-hundred-yard-long  centipede  had  been 
pinned  up  there  and  left  to  squirm),  and  that  what 
I  had  taken  for  the  red  flag  of  anarchy  was  only  the 
mass  effect  of  a  number  of  fluttering  bandannas. 
Again  and  again  they  cheered  the  Hercules  and 
the  White  Ensign,  with  a  fresh  salvo  for  the  Vice- 
roy, which  they  sighted  just  before  the  curve  of 
the  loop  the  train  was  ascending  cut  off  their  view 
of  the  canal.  That  was  all  we  ever  heard  or  saw 
of  them.  We  were  never  even  sure  whether  they 
were  British  or  American.  We  felt  certain,  how- 
ever, that  the  fact  that  most  of  them  were  still 
in  khaki  indicated  that  their  stay  in  the  1 1  Land  of 
Kultur"  had  not  been  a  long  one,  and,  moreover, 
that  they  were  already  on  the  first  leg  of  their 
journey  home. 

Prisoners  working  on  the  land — mostly  Kus- 
sian — were  more  and  more  in  evidence  as  we 
neared  the  Kiel  end  of  the  canal.  The  majority 
of  them  still  wore  their  army  uniforms,  but  other- 
wise there  was  little  to  differentiate  them — a  short 


214 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


distance  away  at  least — from  the  native  peasant 
labour.  None  of  them  appeared  to  be  under 
guard,  and  in  many  places  they  were  working  side 
by  side  with  German  farm  hands  of  both  sexes. 
At  a  number  of  points  I  saw  Russians  lounging 
indolently  in  groups  consisting  mostly  of  Ger- 
mans (several  of  which  included  women)  that  had 
gathered  along  the  banks  of  the  canal  to  watch  us 
pass,  and  two  or  three  times  I  observed  unmis- 
takable Eussian  prisoners  (or  perhaps  ex-prison- 
ers) walking  arm-in-arm  and  apparently  in  ani- 
mated conversation  with  German  girls.  They 
seem  quite  to  have  taken  root  in  the  country. 
Indeed,  the  pilot  of  the  Viceroy  for  the  first  half 
of  the  passage  through  the  canal — he  was  a 
Schleswig  man,  strongly  Danish  in  appearance 
and  probably  in  sympathies — assured  me  that  the 
Germans  had  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  getting 
Eussian  prisoners  to  leave  the  country  at  all,  and 
that  there  had  been  frequent  " desertions"  from 
trains  and  boats  whenever  it  had  been  attempted. 
This  may  well  have  been  true,  though — with 
labour  in  Germany  as  much  in  demand  as  it  was 
throughout  the  war — I  doubt  very  much  if  a  great 
deal  in  the  way  of  repatriation  of  Eussians  had 
ever  been  attempted. 

With  the  towns  and  villages  increasing  in  size 
and  number  as  we  came  to  the  fertile  rolling  coun- 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     215 

try  toward  the  Baltic  end  of  the  canal,  evidences 
multiplied  that  the  population  expected  our  com- 
ing and  that,  directly  or  indirectly,  they  had  been 
instructed  to  adopt  a  ' '  conciliatory ' '  bearing.  In 
the  farming  region  toward  the  North  Sea  end  their 
bearing  had  been  more  suggestive  of  indifference 
than  anything  else;  but  in  the  crowds  that  came 
down  to  line  the  railed  "promenades"  along  the 
banks  an  ingratiating  attitude  was  at  once  ap- 
parent. Some  of  these  people,  of  course,  were  of 
Danish  extraction  and  probably  sincere,  especially 
a  number  who  waved  their  hands  from  well  in- 
side their  doorways,  as  though  to  avoid  being 
observed  by  their  neighbours;  but  for  the  most 
part  it  was  the  same  nauseating  exhibition  we  had 
already  seen  repeated  so  often  at  railway  stations 
all  over  the  North  Sea  littoral. 

The  only  individual  we  saw  in  the  whole  passage 
who  thoroughly  convinced  me  of  his  sincerity  was 
a  bloated  ruffian  who  hailed  us  from  the  stern 
of  the  barge  he  had  edged  into  a  ferry  slip  to 
give  us  room  to  pass.  "Go  back  to  England,  you 
English  swine ! "  he  roared  to  the  accompaniment 
of  a  lewd  gesture.  We  learned  later  that  he  gave 
both  the  Hercules  and  Verdun  the  same  per- 
emptory orders.  Yes,  he  was  quite  sincere,  that 
old  bargee,  and  for  that  reason  I  have  always 
thought  more  kindly  of  him  than  of  all  the  rest 


216 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


of  his  grimacing  brethren  and  sistern  we  saw 
along  the  canal  that  day.  A  spectacled  student 
(though  it  is  quite  possible  he  was  trying  to  put 
the  same  sentiment  in  politer  language)  was 
rather  less  convincing.  "English  gentlemen, "  he 
cried,  drawing  his  loose-jointed  frame  up  to  its 
full  height  and  glaring  at  the  bridge  of  the  Viceroy 
from  under  his  peaked  cap,  "why  do  you  come 
here?"  That  may  have  been  intended  for  a  pro- 
test, or,  again,  he  may  merely  have  been  ' '  swank- 
ing" his  linguistic  accomplishments. 

The  bluejackets  were  splendid.  There  were 
places — notably  at  several  industrial  establish- 
ments where  crowds  of  rather  "on-coming"  girls 
in  trousers  exerted  their  blonde  witcheries  to  the 
full  in  endeavours  to  "start  something" — when 
the  least  sign  of  friendliness  from  the  ship  would 
have  undoubtedly  been  met  with  loud  acclaim. 
But  not  a  British  hand  did  I  see  lifted  in  response 
to  the  hundreds  waved  from  the  banks,  while 
many  a  simpering  grin  died  out  as  the  moon-face 
behind  it  passed  under  the  steady  stare  of  the 
imperturbable  matelots  lining  the  rails  of  the 
steadily  steaming  warships. 

The  length  of  the  Kiel  Canal  is  just  under  a 
hundred  kilometres  (about  sixty  miles),  so  that 
— at  the  speed  of  ten  kilometres  an  hour  to  which 
we  were  limited — the  passage  required  about  ten 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     217 

hours,  exclusive  of  the  time  spent  in  locking  in 
and  out.  At  it  was  an  hour  after  dawn  when  we 
began  the  passage  at  Brunsbiittel,  the  short  winter 
day  was  not  long  enough  to  make  it  possible  to 
react  the  other  end  in  daylight.  By  five  o'clock 
darkness  had  begun  to  settle  over  the  waters,  and 
the  grey  mists,  piling  ever  thicker  in  the  narrow 
notch  between  the  hills,  deepened  through  violet 
to  purple  before  taking  on  the  black  opacity  of 
the  curtain  of  the  night.  Then  the  lights  came 
on — parallel  rows  of  incandescents  narrowing  to 
mist-softened  wedges  of  blurred  brightness  ahead 
and  astern — and  we  continued  cleaving  our  easy 
effortless  way  through  the  ebony  water. 

The  blank  squares  of  lighted  villa  windows 
heralded  the  approach  to  Kiel;  then  factories, 
black,  still,  and  stagnant,  with  the  tracery  of  over- 
head cranes  and  the  bulk  of  tall  chimneys  showing 
dimly  through  the  mists;  then  the  locks.  As  the 
difference  between  the  canal  level  and  the  almost 
tideless  Baltic  is  only  a  matter  of  inches,  lock- 
ing-out was  even  a  more  expeditious  operation 
than  locking  in  from  the  Elbe  at  the  other  end. 
There  was  just  time  to  note  that  the  "Kaiser  Wil- 
helm"  mosaic,  there  as  at  Brunsbiittel,  had  been 
scrubbed  up  bright  and  clean,  when  the  gates 
ahead  folded  inward  and  the  way  into  the  Baltic 
was  open.  Half  an  hour  later,  after  steaming 


218          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

slowly  across  a  harbour  past  many  moored  war- 
ships, we  were  tying  up  alongside  the  Hercules, 
where  she  had  come  to  anchor  a  mile  off  Kiel 
dockyard. 

The  fog  lifted  during  the  night,  and  for  an  hour 
or  two  the  following  morning  there  were  even 
signs  that  our  long-lost  friend,  the  sun,  was 
struggling  to  show  his  face  through  the  sinister 
shoals  of  cumulo-nimbus  banked  f  rowningly  across 
the  south-eastern  heavens.  It  was  evident  dirty 
weather  was  brewing,  but  for  the  moment  Kiel  and 
its  harbour  were  revealed  in  all  their  loveliness. 
Completely  land-locked  from  the  open  Baltic,  the 
beautiful  little  fiord  disclosed  a  different  prospect 
in  whichever  direction  one  turned  his  eyes.  The 
famous  Kaiserliche  Yacht  Club  was  close  at  hand 
over  the  port  quarter  of  the  Hercules,  with  a  villa- 
bordered  strand  opening  away  to  the  right.  The 
airy  filagree  of  lofty  cranes  revealed  the  location 
of  what  had  been  Europe 's  greatest  naval  dock- 
yard, while  masses  of  red  roofs  disclosed  the 
heart  of  Kiel  itself.  Heavily  wooded  hills,  still 
green,  rippled  along  the  skyline  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  fiord,  with  snug  little  bays  running 
back  into  them  at  frequent  intervals  as  they  bil- 
lowed away  toward  the  Baltic  entrance.  Singu- 
larly attractive  even  in  winter,  it  must  have  been 


Through  the  Cai 


ie  Baltic     219 


a  veritable  yachtsman's  paradise  in  summer.  Be- 
calling  the  marshes  and  bogs  of  the  Jade,  I  mar- 
velled at  the  restraint  of  the  German  naval  officer 
whom  I  had  heard  say  that  he  and  his  wife  "much 
preferred  Kiel  to  Wilhelmshaven. " 

The  warships  in  the  harbour  proved  far  less 
impressive  by  daylight  than  at  night.  Looming 
up  through  the  mists  in  the  darkness,  they  had 
suggested  the  presence  of  a  formidable  fleet.  Now 
they  appeared  as  obsolete  hulks,  from  several  of 
which  even  the  guns  had  been  removed.  There 
was  not  a  modern  capital  ship  left  in  Kiel;  in 
fact,  the  only  warship  of  any  class  which  could 
fairly  lay  claim  to  that  designation  was  the  Reg- 
ensburg,  which  had  managed  to  push  her  broken 
nose  through  the  canal  and  was  now  lying  in- 
shore of  us,  apparently  alongside  some  sort  of 
quay  or  dock.  The  most  interesting  naval  craft 
(if  such  a  term  could  be  applied  to  it)  in  sight  was 
a  floating  submarine  dock,  anchored  a  cable's 
length  on  the  port  beam  of  the  Hercules,  but  even 
that — as  was  proved  on  inspection — was  far  from 
being  the  latest  thing  of  its  kind. 

The  British  ships  were  the  object  of  a  good 
deal  of  interest,  especially  during  the  first  few 
hours  of  the  day  while  the  fog  held  off.  Various 
and  sundry  small  craft  put  off  with  parties  to  size 
us  up  at  close  range,  amongst  these — significant 


220 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


commentary  on  the  fact  that  at  every  one  of  the 
conferences,  including  the  one  held  that  very  day, 
the  Germans  had  advanced  "petrol  shortage "  as 
the  reason  why  cars  could  not  be  provided  to 
reach  this  or  that  station — being  a  number  of 
motor  launches.  As  all  of  these  seemed  to  be  in 
the  hands  of  white-banded  sailors  or  dockyard 
"mateys,"  the  inference  might  have  been  drawn 
that  the  petrol  used  was  not  under  the  control 
of  the  naval  authorities;  but  so  many  of  the 
other  "reasons/7  advanced  to  discourage,  if  not 
to  obstruct,  inspections  which  the  Germans,  for 
one  reason  or  another,  did  not  want  to  have  made 
turned  out  to  be  fictitious,  that  one  was  tempted 
to  believe  that  "the  absolute  lack  of  petrol"  was 
on  all  fours  with  them. 

Most  of  these  excursion  parties  kept  at  a  re- 
spectful distance,  but  there  was  one  launch-load 
of  men  and  girls  from  the  docks,  which  persisted 
in  circling  close  to  the  ships,  and  even  in  coming 
up  under  the  stern  of  the  Hercules,  and  offering  to 
exchange  cap  ribbons.  The  two-word  reply  of 
one  of  the  bluejackets  to  these  overtures  would 
hardly  do  to  print,  but  its  effect  was  crushing. 
Nothing  but  poor  steering  prevented  that  launch 
from  taking  the  shortest  course  back  to  the  dock- 
yard landing. 

The    German    Naval    Armistice     Commission 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     221 

which  came  off  to  the  Hercules  at  Kiel  to  discuss 
arrangements  for  inspection  in  the  Baltic  differed 
from  that  at  Wilhelmshaven  only  in  a  few  of  the 
subordinate  members.  Kear- Admiral  Goette  con- 
tinued to  preside,  with  the  tall,  blonde  Von  Miiller, 
of  the  first  Emden,  and  the  shifty,  pasty-faced 
Hinzmann,  of  the  General  Staff  at  Berlin,  as  his 
chief  advisers.  Commander  Lohmann  still  pre- 
sided over  the  German  sub-commission  for  ship- 
ping, but  there  was  a  new  officer  in  charge  of 
1 1  air ' '  arrangements.  This  latter  individual,  who 
proved  to  be  one  of  the  most  "Hunnish"  Huns 
we  encountered  anywhere,  I  shall  have  something 
to  say  of  in  the  next  chapter. 

That  the  German  Commission  had  been  "  stif- 
fened "  under  the  influence  of  new  forces  in  Kiel 
was  evident  from  the  opening  of  the  conference; 
in  fact,  a  good  part  of  this  opening  Baltic  sitting 
was  devoted  to  reducing  them  to  the  same  state 
of  " sweet  reasonableness"  in  which  they  had 
risen  from  the  closing  sitting  at  Wilhelmshaven. 
One  of  the  most  astonishing  of  their  contentions 
arose  in  connection  with  three  unsurrendered 
U-boats,  which  had  been  discovered  in  the  course 
of  warship  inspection  at  Wilhelmshaven.  Asked 
when  these  might  be  expected  ready  to  proceed  to 
Harwich,  Admiral  Goette  replied  that  his  Gov- 
ernment did  not  consider  themselves  under  obli- 


222          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

gation  to  deliver  the  boats  at  all.  The  justifica- 
tion advanced  for  this  remarkable  stand  consti- 
tuted one  of  the  most  delightful  instances  of  char- 
acteristic Hun  reasoning  that  developed  in  the 
course  of  the  visit.  This  was  the  gist  of  it :  "We 
agreed  to  deliver  all  U-boats  in  condition  to  pro- 
ceed to  sea  in  the  first  fourteen  days  of  the  armis- 
tice, "  contended  the  Germans;  "but — although 
we  don 't  deny  that  they  should  have  been  delivered 
in  that  period — the  fact  that  they  were  not  so  de- 
livered releases  us  from  our  obligation  to  deliver 
them  now.  As  evidence  of  our  good  faith,  how- 
ever, we  propose  that  the  vessels  in  question  be 
disarmed  and  remain  in  German  ports. " 

The  Germans  had  so  thoroughly  convinced 
themselves  that  this  fantastic  interpretation 
would  be  accepted  by  the  Allied  Commission  that 
Admiral  Goette  did  not  consider  himself  able  to 
concede  Admiral  Browning's  demand  (that  the 
three  submarines  should  be  surrendered  at  once) 
without  referring  the  matter  back  to  Berlin.  Defi- 
nite settlement,  indeed,  was  not  arrived  at  un- 
til the  final  conference  nearly  a  week  later,  and  in 
that  time  news  had  been  brought  of  several  score 
U-boats  completed,  or  nearing  completion,  in  the 
yards  of  the  Elbe  and  the  Weser. 

There  was  no  phase  of  the  Allied  Commission's 
activities  which  some  endeavour  was  not  made 


Through  the  Canal  to  the  Baltic     223 

to  obstruct  or  circumscribe  in  the  course  of  this 
opening  session  at  Kiel.  The  German  sub-com- 
mission for  shipping  reported  that  their  Govern- 
ment did  not  feel  called  upon  to  grant  the  claim  of 
the  Allies  for  the  return  of  vessels  seized  as 
prizes;  the  inability  to  arrange  for  special  trains 
and  the  lack  of  petrol  would  make  it  impossible 
to  reach  certain  air  stations  by  land,  while,  so 
far  as  the  experiment  station  at  Warnemiinde  was 
concerned,  the  armistice  did  not  give  the  Allies  the 
right  to  visit  it  at  all ;  as  for  the  Great  Belt  forts, 
they  were  already  disarmed,  and  really  not  worth 
the  trouble  of  inspecting  anyway. 

And  so  it  went  through  some  hours,  the  upshot 
of  it  being  that  the  Germans,  as  at  Wilhelms- 
haven,  "vowing  they  would  ne'er  consent,  con- 
sented." Merchant  ship  inspection  began  that 
afternoon,  continuing  throughout  the  remainder 
of  the  stay  at  Kiel  as  one  steamer  after  another 
came  in  from  this  or  that  Baltic  port  and  dropped 
anchor.  The  following  day  search  of  the  numer- 
ous old  warships  was  started,  and  the  day  after 
that  word  came  that  the  way  had  even  been 
cleared  for  the  inspection  of  the  great  experimen- 
tal seaplane  station  at  Warnemiinde.  For  the 
first  time  there  was  promise  that  the  work  of  the 
Commission  would  be  completed  within  the  period 
of  the  original  armistice. 


IX 


TO    WARNEMUNDE    AND   EUGEN 

THERE  had  been  a  half-mile  or  more  of  visibility 
when  we  got  under  weigh  at  eight  o'clock,  but  in 
the  mouth  of  Kiel  Fiord  a  solid  wall  of  fog  was 
encountered,  behind  the  impenetrable  pall  of  which 
all  objects  more  than  a  few  yards  ahead  were 
completely  cut  off.  The  mist-muffled  wails  of 
horns  and  whistles  coughed  eerily  in  the  depths 
of  the  blank  smother  to  port  and  starboard,  and 
once  the  beating  of  a  bucket  or  saucepan  heralded 
the  spectre  of  a  "  bluff  lee-boarded  fishing  lug- 
ger "  as  the  bare  steerage  way  imparted  by  its 
flapping  yellow  mainsail  carried  it  clear  of  the 
Viceroy's  sharp  stem. 

Three  or  four  more  units  of  that  same  fatalistic 
fishing  fleet  had  been  missed  by  equally  narrow 
margins  when,  looming  high  above  us  as  they 
sharpened  out  of  the  fog,  appeared  the  bulging 
bows  of  what  looked  to  be  a  large  merchantman. 
At  the  same  instant,  too  late  by  many  seconds  to 
be  of  any  use  as  a  warning,  the  snort  of  a  deep- 
toned  whistle  ripped  out  in  response  to  the  queru- 
lous shriek  of  our  own  syren. 

224 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Rligen         225 

When  two  ships,  steaming  on  opposite  courses 
at  something  like  ten  knots,  meet  in  a  fog  the 
usual  result  is  a  collision,  and  nothing  but  the 
quick-wittedness  o'f  the  captain  of  the  Viceroy 
prevented  one  on  this  occasion.  The  stranger,  in 
starboarding  his  helm,  bared  a  long  expanse  of 
rusty  paunch  for  the  nose  of  the  destroyer  to  bury 
itself  in,  as  a  sword-fish  stabs  a  whale,  and  that  is 
what  must  inevitably  have  happened — with  dis- 
astrous consequences  to  both  vessels  in  all  prob- 
ability— had  the  Viceroy  also  attempted  to  avoid 
collision  by  turning  to  port.  Eealizing  this  with 
a  sure  judgment,  the  captain  fell  back  on  an  al- 
ternative which  would  hardly  have  been  open  to 
him  with  a  destroyer  less  powerfully  built  and 
engined  than  the  latest  "Vs."  I  have  already 
told  how,  in  the  lock  at  Brunsbiittel,  he  had 
stopped  his  ship  dead,  just  short  of  the  gates,  by 
going  astern  with  the  engines  at  the  proper  mo- 
ment. Here,  in  scarcely  more  time  than  it  takes 
to  tell  it,  he  not  only  stopped  her  dead  but  had 
her  backing  (at  constantly  accelerating  speed) 
away  from  the  slowly  turning  merchantman.  The 
jar  (followed  by  a  prolonged  throbbing)  was  al- 
most as  sharp  as  when  the  air-brakes  are  set  on 
the  wheels  of  a  speeding  express,  and  the  out- 
raged wake  of  her,  like  the  back  of  a  cat  whose 
fur  has  been  rubbed  the  wrong  way,  arched  in  a 


226 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


tumbling  fountain  high  above  her  quivering  stern. 
But  back  she  went,  and  so  gave  the  burly  freighter 
room  to  blunder  by  in. 

There  was  just  time  to  note  her  high  bulwarks, 
two  or  three  suspicious-looking  superstructures 
(which  one's  passing  acquaintance  with  "Q" 
boats  suggested  as  possibly  masking  guns),  and 
a  folded  seaplane  housed  on  the  poop,  before  the 
menacing  apparition  thinned  and  melted  into  the 
fog  as  suddenly  as  it  had  appeared. 

"I  think  that  ship  is  the  Wolf/'  volunteered  the 
pilot,  watching  with  side-cast  eyes  the  effects  of 
the  announcement.  ' '  You  will  perhaps  remember 
it  as  the  great  raider  of  the  Indian  Ocean. " 

The  captain  looked  up  quickly  from  the  chart 
as  though  about  to  say  something;  then  thought 
better  of  it,  and,  with  a  wistful  smile,  turned  back 
to  his  study  of  the  channel.  I  had  seen  him  smile 
resignedly  like  that  a  few  days  previously  off  the 
Elbe  estuary  when  a  speeding  widgeon,  whose  line 
of  flight  had  promised  to  carry  it  right  over  the 
forecastle,  had  sheered  off  without  giving  him  a 
shot.  What  he  had  said  on  that  occasion  was, 
"Hang  the  blighter;  another  chance  missed!" 

Going  aft  to  breakfast,  I  was  hailed  by  Korvet- 
tenkapitan  M—  (the  officer  commanding  all 
Baltic  air  stations  who  was  accompanying  us  to 
Warnemiinde  and  Eiigen),  warming  himself  at 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Eiigen         227 

the  engine-room  hatchway,  and  informed  that  the 
ship  just  sighted  was  "the  famous  raider,  Moewe, 
that  has  been  so  many  times  through  the  Eng- 
lish blockade."  It  was  he  that  was  correct,  as  it 
turned  out.  We  found  the  Moewe  anchored  three 
or  four  cables7  lengths  on  the  port  bow  of  the 
Hercules  when  we  returned  to  Kiel  the  following 
evening. 

They  were  two  thoroughly  typical  specimens 
of  their  kind,  the  pilot  and  the  flight  commander, 
so  much  so  that  either  would  have  been  pounced 
on  with  delight  by  a  cartoonist  looking  for  a 
model  for  a  figure  of  "Hun  Brutality."  The 
former  claimed  to  have  served  most  of  the  war  in 
U-boats,  and  from  the  fact  that  he  was  only  a 
"one-striper,"  one  reckoned  that  he  was  a  pro- 
moted rating  of  some  kind.  He  was  tall,  dark, 
and  powerful  of  build,  with  hard  black  eyes 
glowering  from  under  bushy  brows.  He  talked  of 
his  submarine  exploits  with  the  greatest  gusto, 
among  these  being  (according  to  his  claim)  the 
launching  of  the  torpedo  which  damaged  the  Sus- 
sex. It  is  possible  that  he  was  quite  as  useful 
a  U-boat  officer  as  he  said  he  was  (for  he  looked 
fully  capable  of  doing  a  number  of  the  things  one 
had  heard  of  U-boat  officers  doing) ;  but  he  turned 
out,  as  the  sequel  proved,  only  an  indifferent  pilot. 

The  flight  officer  is  easiest  described  by  saying 


228 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


that  he  was  like  what  one  would  imagine  Hinden- 
burg  to  have  been  at  thirty-five  or  thereabouts. 
The  resemblance  to  the  great  Field-Marshal  was 
physical  only,  for  the  anti-type,  far  from  having 
the  "  bluff,  blunt  fighter "  air  of  the  former,  was 
a  subtle  intriguer  of  the  highest  order.  Just  how 
"subtle"  he  was  may  be  judged  from  the  fact 
that  within  ten  minutes  of  coming  aboard  that 
morning  he  had  drawn  one  of  the  British  officers 
aside  to  warn  him  of  the  menace  to  England  in 
Wilson's  "fourteen  points, "  and  that,  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  after  the  snub  this  kindly  advice  won 
him,  he  had  cornered  one  of  the  American  officers 
to  bid  him  beware  of  the  inevitable  attack  his  coun- 
try must  very  soon  expect  from  England  and 
Japan. 

A  half -hour  more  "by  luck  and  lead"  took  us 
out  of  the  fog,  and  an  almost  normal  visibility 
made  it  possible  for  the  Viceroy  to  increase  to  her 
"  economic "  cruising  speed  of  seventeen  knots. 
The  red  roofs  of  the  summer  hotels  along 
Warnemiinde's  waterfront  began  pushing  above 
the  horizon  a  little  after  noon,  and  by  one  we  were 
heading  in  to  where  the  mouth  of  a  broad  canal 
opened  up  behind  a  long  stone  breakwater.  A 
large  ferry  steamer,  flying  the  Danish  flag,  was 
just  rounding  the  end  of  the  breakwater  and 
turning  off  to  the  north-west,  and  from  the  word 


"HINDY"   (LEFT)  AND  GERMAN  PILOT  WHO  CLAIMED  TO  HAVE 
LAUNCHED  THE  TORPEDO  WHICH  DAMAGED  THE  "SUSSEX" 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         229 

" ARMISTICE"  painted  on  her  sides  in  huge  white 
letters  we  took  it  she  was  engaged  in  repatriating 
Allied  prisoners  by  way  of  Copenhagen.  As  we 
closed  her,  this  impression  was  confirmed  by  the 
sight  of  two  men  in  the  unmistakable  uniforms  of 
British  officers  pacing  the  after-deck  arm-in-arm. 
Surprised  that  they  appeared  to  be  taking  no 
notice  of  the  Viceroy,  with  the  White  Ensign  at 
her  stern  doing  its  best  to  flap  them  a  message  of 
encouragement,  I  raised  my  glass  and  scanned 
them  closely.  Then  the  dark  glasses  both  were 
wearing,  and  their  slow  uncertain  steps,  at  once 
suggested  the  sad  explanation  of  their  indiffer- 
ence. There  was  no  doubt  the  sight  of  both  was 
seriously  affected,  and  that  they  were  probably 
hardly  able  more  than  to  feel  their  way  around. 
As  nothing  less  than  "Rule  Britannia "  or  "God 
Save  the  King"  on  the  syren  would  have  given 
them  any  hint  of  how  things  stood,  we  had  to  pass 
on  unrecognized. 

Running  a  quarter  of  a  mile  up  the  canal,  the 
Viceroy  went  alongside  the  wall  a  hundred  yards 
above  the  railway  station.  The  news  of  our  ar- 
rival had  spread  quickly  in  the  town,  and  among 
a  considerable  crowd  which  assembled  along  the 
waterfront  were  a  number  of  British  prisoners, 
most  of  them  in  their  khaki.  Several  German 
sailors — one  or  two  of  them  with  white  bands  on 


230          To  Kiel  in  the  "Hercules" 

their  arms — to  whom  the  Tommies  had  been  talk- 
ing, kept  discreetly  in  the  background,  but  the  lat- 
ter, grinning  with  delight  and  exchanging  good- 
natured  chaff  with  the  bluejackets,  caught  our 
mooring  lines  and  helped  make  them  fast.  They 
looked  in  extremely  good  condition  and  spirits, 
the  consequence — as  we  learned  presently — of  hav- 
ing had  a  considerable  accumulation  of  prisoners ' 
stores  turned  over  to  them  since  the  armistice. 
Beer,  they  said,  was  the  only  thing  they  were  short 
of,  and  this  difficulty  they  seemed  in  a  fair  way 
to  remedy  when  I  left  with  the  "air"  party  for 
the  seaplane  station. 

The  great  Warnemunde  experiment  station  oc- 
cupied the  grounds  of  what  appeared  to  have  been 
some  kind  of  a  pre-war  industrial  or  agricultural 
exposition.  Crossing  the  canal  in  a  launch,  a  few 
steps  took  us  to  and  through  a  somewhat  preten- 
tious entrance  arch,  from  where  it  was  several 
hundred  yards  to  the  first  of  a  long  row  of  wood 
and  steel  hangars.  The  Commander  of  the  sta- 
tion had  received  us  at  the  landing;  the  rest  of 
the  officers  met  us  in  the  roadway  in  front  of  the 
first  shed  to  be  inspected.  Evidences  of  the  re- 
sentment they  undoubtedly  felt  over  having  to 
give  way  in  the  matter  of  the  visit  (it  had  been 
the  German  contention  that  Warnemunde,  not  be- 
ing a  service  station,  was  not  liable  to  inspection 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         231 

under  the  terms  of  the  armistice)  were  not  lacking, 
but  as  these  were  mostly  confined  to  scowling 
glances  they  did  not  interfere  seriously  with  the 
work  in  hand. 

As  the  Allied  Commission,  in  the  conference  of 
a  couple  of  days  previously  at  Kiel,  had  insisted  on 
the  visit  to  Warnemiinde  on  the  grounds  of  satis- 
fying itself  that  what  the  Germans  claimed  was  an 
experiment  station  was  not  used  for  service  work, 
inspection  was  limited  to  the  comparatively  per- 
functory checking  over  of  the  machines  against  a 
list  furnished  in  advance,  seeing  that  they  dis- 
played no  evidences  of  having  been  used  for  any- 
thing more  than  experimental  flights,  and  ascer- 
taining that  they  had  been  properly  disarmed. 
This,  as  soon  as  it  became  evident  that  the  sta- 
tion was  in  fact  quite  what  the  Germans  had 
claimed  it  to  be,  was  done  very  rapidly,  the  in- 
spection of  well  over  a  hundred  machines,  housed 
in  eight  or  ten  different  sheds,  being  completed 
within  three  hours. 

The  machines  were,  of  course,  an  extremely  in- 
teresting assortment,  for  practically  all  of  them 
were  either  new  designs  or  else  old  ones  in  proc- 
ess of  development.  There  was  the  last  word  in 
steel  pontoons,  with  which  the  Germans  have  been 
so  successful,  and  also  a  number  of  the  very 
striking  all-metal  Junker  machines,  in  the  con- 


232          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

struction  of  which  wood,  and  even  fabric,  has  been 
replaced  by  the  light  but  tough  alloy  called 
"  duraluminum. "  One  of  the  German  officers 
volunteered  the  information  that  the  principal 
advantage  of  the  latter  over  the  ordinary  machine 
was  the  fact  that  more  of  it  could  be  salved  after  a 
crash.  The  fact  that  there  was  nothing  to  burn 
sometimes  rendered  it  possible  to  save  an  injured 
pilot  entangled  in  the  wreckage,  where  the  wood 
and  fabric  of  an  ordinary  machine  would  have 
made  him  a  funeral  pyre.  Against  these  advan- 
tages, he  added,  stood  the  handicap  of  greater 
weight  and  the  fact  that  the  metal  wings  occasion- 
ally deflected  into  the  pilot  or  petrol  tank  a  bullet 
which  would  have  passed  harmlessly  through  wood 
and  fabric. 

There  were  several  of  the  late  Travemunde  and 
Sablatnig  types,  medium-sized  machines  which, 
with  their  powerful  engines  and  trim  lines,  looked 
extremely  useful.  A  large  double-engined  Gotha 
torpedo-launching  seaplane  was  viewed  with  a 
good  deal  of  interest  by  the  experts  of  the  party, 
because  it  was  a  type  to  the  development  of  which 
it  had  been  expected  that  the  Germans  had  given 
a  great  deal  of  attention.  Down  to  the  very  day 
of  the  armistice  the  Grand  Fleet — whether  at 
Kosyth  or  Scapa — was  never  considered  entirely 
free  from  the  menace  of  an  attack  by  a  flotilla  of 


To  Warnemlinde  and  Riigen         233 

torpedo-carrying  seaplanes,  and  it  was  a  matter 
of  considerable  surprise  to  the  sub-commission  for 
naval  air  stations  when  it  transpired  in  the  course 
of  their  visits  to  the  German  North  Sea  and  Baltic 
bases  to  find  a  practically  negligible  strength  in 
these  types.  The  almost  prohibitive  odds  against 
getting  a  seaplane  carrier  within  striking  distance 
of  either  of  the  Grand  Fleet  bases — handicap  im- 
posed by  the  complete  surface  command  of  the 
North  Sea  by  the  British — was  undoubtedly  re- 
sponsible for  Germany's  failure  to  develop  a  type 
of  machine  which  there  was  little  chance  of  finding 
an  occasion  to  use.  Even  this  one  at  Warne- 
miinde — representing  as  it  did  the  latest  develop- 
ment of  its  type — was  far  from  being  equal  to 
machines  with  which  the  British  were  practising 
torpedo-launching  a  year  before  the  end  of  the 
war. 

The  most  imposing  exhibit  at  Warnemiinde  was 
a  "  giant "  seaplane  rivalling  in  size  the  great 
monoplane  flying  boat  we  had  seen  at  Norderney. 
The  two  were  so  different  in  type  that  it  was 
difficult  to  compare  them,  though  it  is  probable 
that  in  engine  power — both  of  them  had  four 
engines  of  from  250  to  300  horse-power  each — 
and  in  wing  area  they  were  about  equal.  The 
Warnemiinde  machine — which  was  a  biplane,  with 
two  pontoons  instead  of  a  "boat" — had  a  some- 


234 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


what  greater  spread  of  wing,  hut  this  must  have 
been  compensated  for  by  the  vastly  greater 
breadth  of  those  of  the  monoplane.  Superior  sea- 
worthiness had  been  claimed  for  the  latter  on 
account  of  the  greater  height  of  its  wings  from 
the  water  when  afloat ;  but  that  was  ex  parte  evi- 
dence, and  we  had  no  chance  to  hear  what  Warne- 
miinde  had  to  say  in  favour  of  its  pet. 

An  incident  which  occurred  in  connection  with 
the  inspection  of  the  "giant"  furnished  a  very 
graphic  idea  of  the  really  colossal  size  of  it.  In 
order  to  get  over  it  the  more  quickly,  all  of  the 
several  members  of  the  Allied  party  climbed  upf 
and  took  a  hand  in  the  work.  Whether  the  Ger- 
man officers  thought  some  of  the  gear  might  be 
carried  off  by  the  visitors,  whether  they  were 
afraid  the  secrets  of  some  of  their  technical  instru- 
ments might  be  discovered,  or  whether  they  were 
simply  "doing  the  honours  of  the  occasion, "  we 
were  never  quite  sure.  At  any  rate,  up  swarmed 
at  least  a  dozen  of  them,  scrambling  like  a  crowd 
at  a  ticket  turnstile  to  get  inside.  In  a  jiffy  they 
had  disappeared,  swallowed  completely  by  the 
capacious  fuselage.  Not  even  a  head  was  in  sight. 
Only  the  clatter  of  many  tongues  and  the  clang  of 
boots  tramping  on  steel  plates  told  that  close  to  a 
score  of  men  were  jostling  each  other  in  the 
cavernous  maw  of  the  mighty  "  amphibian. ' ' 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         235 

Only  the  Commander  of  the  station — a  some- 
what porcine-looking  individual,  whose  rotund 
figure  furnished  ample  explanation  why  he  had 
not  joined  the  scramble — and  myself  were  left  on 
terra  firma.  Plainly  disturbed  by  the  thought 
that  Germany's  supreme  achievement  in  aerial 
science  was  passing  under  the  eye  of  the  enemy, 
he  paced  up  and  down  moodily  for  a  minute  or 
two  and  then,  with  clearing  brow,  came  over  and 
asked  me  what  was  the  horse-power  of  the  largest 
"Inglisch  Zeeblane." 

"I  really  can't  tell  you,"  I  replied,  half  angry, 
half  amused  at  the  supreme  cheek  of  the  man. 

"Ach,  but  vy  will  you  not  tell  me?"  he  urged 
wheedlingly.  "Der  war  iss  over;  ve  vill  now 
have  no  more  zeecrets.  Today  you  see  all  ve  haf . 
Freddy  soon  ve  come  und  see  all  you  haf.  There 
iss  much  ve  can  learn  from  you,  und  much  you  can 
learn  from  us.  Ve  vill  haf  no  more  zeecrets." 

There  were  several  things  that  I  wanted  to  say 
to  that  Hun  optimist,  and  it  required  no  little 
restraint  to  pass  them  over  and  confine  myself  to 
suggesting  that  he  should  take  up  the  matter  of 
the  exchange  of  "zeecrets"  with  Commander 

C ,  the  Senior  Officer  of  the  party.  He  looked 

at  the  latter  (who  was  just  descending)  irreso- 
lutely once  or  twice,  and  then,  doubtless  seeing 
nothing  encouraging  in  the  set  of  Commander 


236 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules 


C—  -'s  lean  Yankee  jaw,  shrugged  his  fat 
shoulders  and  resumed  his  moody  pacings.  We 
encountered  a  number  of  eager  "searchers  for 
knowledge ' '  in  the  course  of  the  visit,  but  no  other 
that  I  heard  of  who  employed  quite  such  a 
"Prussian  mass  tactics "  style  of  attack  as  this 
one. 

Going  from  shed  to  shed  as  the  inspection 
progressed,  one  noticed  at  once  the  much  greater 
extent  to  which  wood  had  figured  in  their  construc- 
tion than  in  that  of  those  of  the  North  Sea  stations. 
Only  the  frames  were  of  steel,  and  even  the  fire- 
proof asbestos  sheeting  which  figured  so  exten- 
sively in  the  great  Zeppelin  sheds  had  been  very 
sparingly  employed.  As  this  also  proved  to  be 
the  practice  in  the  two  large  stations  we  visited 
the  next  day  on  the  island  of  Riigen,  it  was 
assumed  that  the  comparative  cheapness  of  wood 
in  the  Baltic  had  been  responsible  for  the  freedom 
with  which  it  had  been  employed  to  save  steel  and 
concrete.  The  inevitable  penalty  of  this  inflam- 
mable construction  had  been  paid  at  Warnemiinde, 
where  the  tangled  masses  of  wreckage  in  the  ruins 
6f  a  burned  hangar  indicated  that  all  the  ma- 
chines it  had  contained  were  destroyed  with  the 
building. 

When  we  returned  to  the  Viceroy  after  the  in- 
spection was  over,  we  found  a  number  of  British 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Eiigen         237 

prisoners  aboard  as  the  guests  of  the  bluejackets. 
Several  of  them  had  asked  for  "rashers,  or  any- 
thing greasy, "  but  for  tobacco  and  "home  com- 
forts "  they  appeared  to  be  rather  better  off  than 
their  hosts.  The  captain  said  that  he  had  offered 
passages  back  to  the  Hercules  to  any  that  cared  to 
go,  but  they  had  all  declined  with  thanks,  saying 
that  they  were  helping  to  distribute  food  for  other 
prisoners  passing  through  Warnemiinde  on  their 
way  home  via  Denmark,  and  that  they  would  not 
return  home  until  this  work  was  finished.  We  left 
them  without  any  misgivings  save,  perhaps,  on  the 
score  that  they  Seemed  rather  too  tolerant  of  the 
presence  among  them  of  a  number  of  white- 
banded  German  sailors. 

During  our  absence  the  German  harbour  master 
had  come  aboard  to  warn  the  captain  that,  as  it 
was  verboten  to  use  the  turning  basin  after  five 
o'clock,  it  would  be  necessary  for  him  to  proceed 
there  before  that  hour.  When  the  captain  thanked 
him  and  replied  that  he  hoped  to  be  able  to  carry 
on  without  resorting  to  the  turning  basin,  the 
astonished  official  warned  him  that  it  was  highly 
dangerous  to  go  out  backwards,  that  even  the  Ger- 
man T.B.D.'s  never  thought  of  doing  so  mad  a 
thing.  The  sight  of  the  Viceroy  going  astern  at  a 
good  ten  or  twelve  knots  straight  down  the  middle 
of  that  half  a  mile  or  more  of  canal  must  have  been 


238 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


something  of  an  eye-opener  to  that  Kaiserliche 
harbour  master. 

Passing  close  to  the  railway  station  on  the  way 
out  we  had  a  brief  glimpse  of  the  sorry  spectacle 
of  a  huge  mass  of  Eussian  prisoners,  who  ap- 
peared to  have  been  dumped  there  from  one  train 
to  wait  for  another,  going  heaven  knows  where. 
A  thousand  or  more  in  number,  they  had  over- 
flowed the  narrow  strip  of  platform  under  the 
train-shed,  and  as  we  passed  some  hundreds  of 
them,  huddling  together  like  sheep  for  warmth  and 
with  no  protection  save  the  square  of  red  blankets 
thrown  over  their  hunched  shoulders,  were  soaking 
up  the  rain  which  came  drizzling  down  through  the 
early  winter  twilight. 

"Eussian  prisoners  that  we  now  send  back  to 
their  homes, "  explained  Korvettenkapitan  M— 
as  I  passed  his  perch  in  the  hot-air  stream  from 
the  engine-room  hatchway.  i '  They  do  not  like  to 
leave  Germany,  but  we  have  not  now  the  food  for 
them." 

"Out  of  the  frying-pan  into  the  fire,"  com- 
mented the  chief.  "A  return  to  Eussia  is  the  one 
thing  left  worse  than  what  they  Ve  been  through 
here.  Poor  devils — but  listen  to  that!  Talk 
about  your  bird  singing  in  the  rain " 

Deep,  reverberant,  pulsing  like  the  throb  of  a 
mighty  organ,  the  strains  of  what  might  have  been 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         239 

either  a  hymn  or  a  marching  song  were  wafted  to 
our  ears  on  the  wings  of  the  deepening  dusk. 
For  two  or  three  minutes  the  strangely  moving 
sound,  rising  and  falling  like  the  roll  of  a  surf  on 
a  distant  shore,  followed  us  down  the  canal  before 
it  was  quenched  in  the  roar  of  the  accelerating 
fans  as  the  bridge  rang  down  for  increased  speed. 
The  German  was  the  first  to  break  the  silence  in 
which  we  had  listened. 

' 'The  Russians  are  a  strange  people,'7  he  said, 
with  a  note  of  sincerity  in  his  voice  I  had  never 
remarked  before.  "  There  is  always  sadness  in 
their  happiness,  and  always  hope  in  their  despair. 
I  think  they  can  never  be  broken. " 

For  the  first  and  last  time  I  was  inclined  to 
agree  with  him. 

A  three-hour  run  at  a  speed  of  fifteen  knots 
brought  us  to  the  island  of  Riigen,  where  we 
anchored  in  shallow  water  three  or  four  miles  off 
the  station  of  Biig,  which  we  were  scheduled  to 
inspect  in  the  morning.  It  was  only  a  fair- 
weather  anchorage,  however,  and  the  lee  shore,  to- 
gether with  a  falling  barometer  and  a  rising  wind, 
caused  the  pilot  to  advise  running  round  to  the 
somewhat  better  protection  of  Tromper  Bay,  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  island.  This  shift,  which 
there  was  no  real  necessity  for  making,  involved 
an  alteration  of  plan,  for  the  shores  of  Tromper 


240 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules 


Bay  (where  we  now  had  to  attempt  a  landing) 
were  four  or  five  miles  from  Wiek,  the  second 
station  to  be  inspected,  and  entirely  cut  off  from 
communication  with  Bug  by  a  long  lagoon. 
Under  the  circumstances,  the  only  practicable 
plan  seemed  to  be  to  walk  to  Wiek  across  the 
island,  go  from  there  to  Bug  by  launch,  and  then 
endeavour  to  rejoin  the  destroyer  at  her  first 
anchorage  of  the  night  before,  to  which  she  would 
return  in  the  interim.  This  intricate  itinerary 
we  finally  succeeded  in  following,  but  it  almost 
killed  poor  l '  Hindenburg, "  the  fat  German  flying 
officer  escorting  the  party,  who  had  confidently 
counted  on  doing  all  of  his  travelling  by  launch. 

The  motor  launch  refusing  to  start  in  the  morn- 
ing, the  whaler  was  used  to  land  the  inspection 
party.  As  there  appeared  to  be  nothing  in  the 
way  of  a  quay  or  landing-stage,  the  most  likely 
place  to  get  ashore  seemed  to  be  a  dismantled  pier, 
the  piles  of  which  were  visible  from  the  deck  of 
the  destroyer.  "Hindy"  (the  name  had  already 
begun  to  stick  to  him),  however,  promptly  ap- 
pointing himself  as  pilot,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
he  knew  no  more  of  that  particular  stretch  of  coast 
than  any  one  else  in  the  party,  ruled  in  favour  of 
landing  directly  upon  the  beach.  Pulling  straight 
in  on  the  course  he  indicated,  the  heavily  laden 
whaler  grounded  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  from 


To  Warnemunde  and  Riigen         241 

the  shore,  and  was  only  worried  off  by  all  hands 
going  aft  and  raising  the  stranded  bow.  Com- 
mander C—  -  took  over  the  direction  of  affairs 
at  this  juncture,  and  the  incidence  of  events  was 
such  that  "Hindy"  did  not  essay  the  leadership 
role  again  for  some  hours,  and  even  then  but 
transiently. 

The  old  pier,  to  the  end  of  which  the  whaler  was 
now  pulled,  had  evidently  been  wrecked  in  a  storm 
of  many  years  before  and  never  repaired.  Its 
planking  was  gone  entirely,  but  two  strings  of 
timbers  running  along  the  tops  of  the  tottering 
piles  offered  a  possible,  though  precarious,  means 
of  reaching  the  two-hundred-yard-distant  beach. 
When  two  of  the  American  officers  clambered  up, 
however,  they  found  the  timbers  so  slippery  with 
moss  that  it  was  a  sheer  physical  impossibility  to 
stand  erect  and  walk  along  them.  The  only  alter- 
native was  to  sit  astride  one  of  them  and  slither 
along  shoreward,  a  few  inches  at  a  time.  This 
they  did,  pushing  along  a  thick  roll  of  filthy  slime 
in  front  of  them  as  they  went,  and  stopping  every 
now  and  then  to  disengage  the  end  of  a  projecting 
spike  that  was  holding  their  trousers.  Following 
behind  one  of  them,  I  found  the  progress  both  vile 
and  painful,  even  after  his  wiggle-waggle  advance 
had  swabbed  up  the  worst  of  the  slime  and  un- 
covered the  longest  of  the  spikes  lurking  to  am- 


242 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


bush  the  seat  of  my  trousers.  It  must  have  been 
unspeakable  for  the  two  self-sacrificing  pioneers. 

Halfway  in,  the  timbers,  less  exposed  to  the 
splashing  spray,  offered  a  better  footing,  and  from 

there,  following  the  lead  of  Commander  C ,  we 

managed  to  stand  up  and  walk.  Not  until  we 
reached  the  end  and  jumped  off  on  to  the  firm  sand 
and  began  to  count  noses  before  striking  off  inland 
did  any  one  notice  that  "Hindy"  was  missing. 
The  account  of  that  worthy 's  doings  in  the  mean- 
time I  had  that  evening  after  our  return  to  the 
Viceroy  from  the  coxswain  of  the  whaler. 

For  the  first  time  "  Hindy "  had  neglected  to 
insist  on  the  precedence  due  to  his  rank  as  a 
"  three-striper "  and  push  out  in  the  lead  at  a 
landing.  On  the  contrary,  it  appears,  he  had 
lingered  in  the  stern  sheets  of  the  whaler  until  the 
last  of  the  Allied  officers  had  slid  along  out  of 
hearing,  and  then  coolly  ordered  two  of  the  crew 
to  wade  ashore  carrying  him  between  them.  He 
would  show  them,  he  said,  how  the  German  sailors 
joined  hands  to  make  a  chair  for  their  officers  on 
such  an  occasion.  Failing  in  this  manoeuvre,  he 
had  suggested  that  two  of  the  oars  be  lashed  to- 
gether with  the  strip  of  bunting  in  the  stern  sheets 
and  laid  along  across  the  tops  of  the  piles  to  give 
him  a  firm  footing.  Two  of  the  bluejackets,  he 
explained,  could  go  with  him  and  ' l  relay ' '  this  im- 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         243 

provised  gangway  along  ahead.  It  was  only  when 
the  coxswain,  in  English  probably  too  idiomatic  to 
convey  its  full  meaning  to  a  German,  expressed 
his  lack  of  sympathy  with  this  ingenious  proposal 
that  he  screwed  up  his  nerve  to  tackling  the 
"  wiggle-waggle  "  mode  of  progression. 

Given  a  leg  up  by  the  whaler's  crew,  he  wriggled 
astride  the  nearest  longitudinal  strip  of  timber 
and  began  his  snail-like,  shoreward  crawl.  At  the 
end  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour  he  had  barely  reached 
the  less  slippery  timbering  halfway  in,  but  here, 
instead  of  getting  up  on  his  hind  legs,  as  the  rest 
of  us  had  done,  and  ambling  along  on  his  feet,  the 
shivering  wretch  still  persisted  in  embracing  the 
slimy  beam  with  his  fat  thighs  and  continuing  to 
worry  on  " wiggle-waggle." 

Finally  Commander  C ,  whose  eyes  for  the 

last  fifteen  minutes  had  been  turning  back  and 
forth  between  the  ludicrously  swaying  figure  on 
the  pier  and  the  hands  of  his  watch,  uttered  an 
impatient  exclamation  and  squared  his  shoulders 
with  the  air  of  a  man  who  has  come  to  a  great 
decision. 

"We're  already  two  hours  behind  time,"  he 
said,  buttoning  his  waterproof  and  pulling  on  his 
gloves,  "and  it's  touch  and  go  whether  we  can 
finish  in  time  to  return  tonight  to  Kiel  per 
schedule.  It's  a  cert  we  won't  make  it  if  we  have 


244 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


to  wait  any  longer  for  our  tortoise-shaped  and 
tortoise-gaited  friend  out  there.  There's  a  dis- 
agreeable duty  to  be  performed,  and  since  it  is  not 
of  a  nature  that  I  can  conscientiously  order  one 
of  my  subordinate  officers  to  do,  I  guess  it's  up  to 
me  to  pull  it  off  myself.  Kindly  note  that  I'm 
wearing  gloves." 

Vaulting  lightly  from  the  sand  to  a  line  of  tim- 
bering running  parallel,  at  a  distance  of  about  five 
feet,  to  the  one  upon  which  "Hindy"  was  slither- 
ing along,  he  trotted  out  opposite  the  latter, 
reached  across,  lifted  that  protesting  bundle  of 
aoiatomy  to  his  feet,  and  then,  leading  him  by  the 
hand,  started  back  for  the  beach.  The  German 
followed  like  Mary's  Little  Lamb  as  long  as  he 
had  the  dynamic  pressure  of  the  American's 
fingers  to  give  him  courage,  but  when  Commander 

C withdrew  his  guiding  hand  after  he  had 

led  his  fellow  tight-rope  walker  in  above  the  sand, 
"Hindy's"  nerve  went  with  it.  Trying  to  slud- 
der  down  astride  the  timber  again  after  tottering 
drunkenly  for  a  moment,  he  lost  his  balance  and 
tried  to  jump.  The  drop  was  not  over  five  feet, 
and  to  soft  sand  at  that;  but  the  remains  of  a 
riveter  I  once  saw  fall  to  the  pavement  of  Broad- 
way from  the  fortieth  story  of  the  new  Singer 
building  looked  less  inert  than  the  shivering  pan- 
cake that  fat  Prussian  made  when  he  hit  the 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         245 

beach  of  Eiigen.  There  was  really  very  little  to 
choose  between  it  and  a  flatulent  jelly-fish  slowly 
dissolving  in  the  embrace  of  a  mass  of  stranded 
seaweed  a  few  yards  away ;  indeed,  the  subtle  sug- 
gestion of  that  comparison  may  have  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  reflex  action  behind  a  kick  I 
saw  some  one  aim  at  the  jelly-fish  in  passing. 

That  was  the  last  we  saw  of  "Hindy"  (except 
as  a  wavering  blur  on  the  rearward  horizon)  for 
nearly  two  hours. 

Striking  inland  through  the  dunes  and  a  planta- 
tion of  young  pine  trees,  we  emerged  at  a  cross- 
road where  a  signboard  conveyed  the  information 
that  Wiek  (our  immediate  objective)  was  six  and 
four-tenths  kilometres  distant.  "If  we  can  hike 
that  four  miles  inside  of  an  hour  there's  a  fair 
chance  of  cleaning  up  the  whole  job  today, "  said 

Commander  C ,  striking  out  along  the  lightly 

metalled  highway  with  a  swinging  stride. 
"  'Hindy'  will  have  to  get  along  as  best  he  can. 
We  won't  need  him  for  the  inspection  anyhow. " 

Passing  several  rather  dismal  summer  hotels 
(one  of  .which  was  called  the  "Strand  Palace")* 
we  came  to  a  picturesque  little  village  of  brick 
and  thatch  houses,  with  brightly  curtained  win- 
dows, and  standing  in  well-kept  flower  gardens. 
The  villagers  evidently  a  half-agricultural,  half- 
fisher  folk — could  have  had  no  warning  of  our 


246 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules'' 


coming,  as  even  the  station  at  Wiek  was  expecting 
us  from  the  opposite  direction,  and  by  launch. 
Quite  uninstructed  in  the  matter  of  adopting 
" conciliatory  "  tactics  (as  those  of  so  many  of  the 
places  previously  visited  had  so  plainly  been), 
they  simply  went  their  own  easy  way,  displaying 
neither  fear,  resentment,  nor  even  a  great  amount 
of  curiosity.  Most  of  the  shops,  except  those  of 
the  butchers,  were  fairly  well  stocked,  the  dis- 
plays of  Christmas  toys  (among  which  were  some 
very  ingeniously  constructed  "  working "  Zeppe- 
lins) being  really  attractive. 

Beyond  the  village  the  Wiek  road,  which  turned 
off  at  right  angles  from  the  main  highway,  became 
no  more  than  a  muddy  track.  Deeply  rutted  and 
slippery  with  the  last  of  the  snow  which  had 
drifted  into  it  from  a  recent  storm,  walking  in  it 
became  so  laborious  that  we  finally  took  to  the 
fields,  across  the  light  sandy  loam  of  which  we  just 
managed  to  maintain  the  f  our-miles-an-hour  stride 
necessary  to  keep  from  falling  behind  schedule. 
The  several  peasants  encountered  (mostly  women 
with  baskets  of  beets  or  cabbages  on  their  backs) 
regarded  us  with  stolid  impersonal  disinterest, 
and  seemed  hardly  equal  to  the  mental  effort  of 
figuring  out  where  the  motley  array  of  uniforms 
came  from. 

A  tall  spire  gave  us  the  bearing  for  Wiek,  and 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Rligen         247 

we  passed  close  by  the  ancient  stone  church  which 
it  surmounted  in  skirting  the  village  on  a  short- 
cut to  the  air  station.  This  took  us  to  the  rear 
entrance  of  the  latter  (instead  of  the  main  one 
where  we  were  naturally  expected  to  come)  and 
had  the  interesting  sequel  of  bringing  us  face  to 
face  with  a  sentry  wearing  a  red  band  on  his 
sleeve,  the  first  of  that  particular  brand  of  revolu- 
tionist we  had  encountered.  Although  failing  to 
stand  at  attention  as  we  approached,  he  was  other- 
wise quite  respectful  in  his  demeanour  and  made 
haste  to  dispatch  a  messenger  informing  the  Com- 
mander of  the  station  of  our  arrival.  A  number 
of  other  ' '  red-banders ' '  were  seen  in  passing 
through  the  barracks  area  on  the  way  to  the  sheds, 
one  of  them  even  going  so  far  as  to  click  heels  and 
salute. 

In  spite  of  the  flutter  of  red  at  the  rear,  there 
was  no  evidence  of  anything  Bolshevik  in  the  dis- 
play set  out  for  us  in  the  shop-window.  The  men 
lounging  about  the  sheds  fell  in  at  once  on  the 
order  of  the  Commander,  paraded  smartly,  and 
when  dismissed  showed  no  disposition  to  hang 
about  the  doors,  as  had  occasionally  been  the  case 
at  other  stations.  They  apparently  had  not  even 
insisted  on  one  of  their  representatives  being 
present  during  the  inspection.  None  but  the  five 
or  six  officers  receiving  the  party  conducted  it 


248 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


around.  These  were  all  keen-eyed,  quick-moving 
youngsters,  but  the  fact  that  they  were  com- 
paratively sparsely  decorated  seemed  to  indicate 
that  the  station  was  not  of  an  importance  to  com- 
mand the  services  of  the  ' '  star  turn ' '  men  we  had 
seen  at  Norderney,  Borkum,  and  other  North  Sea 
bases. 

There  was  one  thing  which  turned  up  in  the 
course  of  the  inspection  which  was  not  upon  the 
list  furnished  us  by  the  Germans,  and  that  was  a 
large  stack  of  second-hand  furniture  which  I 
stumbled  across  in  an  out-of-the-way  corner  of 
the  first  shed  visited.  An  unmistakable  French 
name  on  the  back  of  a  red  plush-upholstered  divan 
first  suggested  the  lot  was  an  imported  one,  and 
looking  closer  I  discovered  a  half-obliterated 
maker's  mark,  with  the  letters  "Brux-l-s"  fol- 
lowing it.  Diverting  one  of  the  inspecting  officers 
in  that  direction  as  opportunity  offered,  I  asked 
him  what  he  thought  the  word  had  been.  * '  Prob- 
ably the  Belgian  spelling  of  Brussels,"  he  replied 
promptly,  "and  certainly  the  English  spelling  of 
loot."  When  the  German  Commander  chanced  to 
mention,  a  few  minutes  later,  that  his  flight  had 
only  recently  come  from  Zeebrugge,  both  con- 
jectures seemed  to  be  confirmed. 

The  inspection  was  over  by  the  time  "Hindy" 
arrived,  and  we  departed  for  Bug  immediately 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         249 

he  had  completed  the  wash-down  and  "brush-up 
that  his  brother  officers,  who  treated  him  with  a 
good  deal  of  deference,  insisted  on  his  having. 
He  was  too  dead  beat  to  display  temper  when 
he  had  been  bundled  into  the  launch,  and  he  im- 
pressed me  as  telling  the  bare  literal  truth  when 
he  said  it  was  the  hardest  walk  he  had  ever  taken 
in  his  life. 

A  half -hour's  run  brought  the  launch  alongside 
the  landing-stage  at  Biig,  which  ideally  located 
station  occupied  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  the  narrow 
spit  of  sand  separating  the  broad,  shallow  lagoon 
we  had  just  crossed  from  the  open  Baltic.  Con- 
crete runways  sloped  down  to  both  strands,  so 
that  seaplanes  could  be  launched  in  either  direc- 
tion. It  was  an  admirably  planned  and  equipped 
station  in  every  respect.  An  hour's  inspection 
showed  that  the  provisions  of  the  armistice,  here 
as  at  all  of  the  other  stations  visited,  had  been 
satisfactorily  carried  out.  A  novel  feature  of  the 
visit  was  the  presence  of  a  couple  of  photogra- 
phers— evidently  official  ones,  judging  from  the 
fine  machines  they  had — who  waylaid  the  party  at 
every  corner  and  exposed  a  large  number  of 
plates. 

"Hindy,"  who  had  disappeared  shortly  after 
we  landed,  turned  up  again  about  the  time  the 
inspection  of  the  last  hangar  was  completed,  pick- 


250 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


ing  his  teeth  and  considerably  restored  in  aplomb 
by  the  hearty  mittagessen  he  had  regaled  himself 
with  at  the  Commander's  mess.  Not  until  then 
were  we  informed  that  the  station  had  no  launch 
or  boat  of  any  kind  available  on  the  Baltic  side. 
This  meant  that  the  Viceroy — she  had  now  come 
to  anchor  three  or  four  miles  off-shore — would 
have  to  send  a  boat  in  for  us,  and  that  an  hour's 
time  had  been  wasted  before  making  a  signal  for 
it.  Hastily  writing  a  message  requesting  that  the 
motor  launch  or  whaler  be  sent  in  to  the  landing, 
Commander  C-  -  handed  it  to  the  Commander 
of  the  station,  suggesting  that  it  be  made  by 
" Visual' '  to  the  Viceroy  in  International  Morse. 
Here  "Hindy,"  brave  with  much  beer,  asserted 
his  authority  again.  Snatching  the  paper  from 
the  station  Commander's  hand,  he  read  over  the 
signal  with  a  frown  of  disapproval,  and  then 
handed  it  back  to  Commander  C . 

"That  is  much  too  long  and  complicated  for  a 
German  signalman  to  send  in  English,"  he 
growled.  "You  should  write  only,  'Send  boat 
immediately. '  That  is  quite  enough. ' 9 

There  was  a  look  in  Commander  C 's  face 

like  that  it  had  worn  when  he  turned  and  left 
"Hindy"  in  a  heap  on  the  beach  by  the  jelly-fish, 
but  he  controlled  himself  and  spoke  with  consider- 
able restraint. 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Rligen         251 

"  Since  the  Viceroy  is  not  my  private  yacht, " 
he  said  quietly,  "any  signal  I  make  to  her  will 
begin  'Eequest. »  I  might  add  that  if  I  were  her 
captain,  and  a  passenger  of  mine  made  me  a  signal 
like  the  one  you  suggest,  he  could  wait  till — till 
the  Baltic  froze  over  before  I'd  send  a  boat  to 
take  him  off.  Unless  you're  prepared  to  wait 
that  long,  you  can't  do  better  than  see  that  the 
signal  is  made  exactly  as  I  have  written  it." 

In  spite  of  its  "length  and  complication,"  that 
signal,  as  we  saw  it  later  in  the  Viceroy,  was 
identical  with  the  original  to  a  T. 

It  was  rather  hard  luck  that  Biig,  which  was  the 
first  station  we  visited  without  carrying  our  own 
lunch  in  the  form  of  sandwiches,  was  also  the  only 
one  where  we  were  not  offered  shelter  and  refresh- 
ment. "Hindy"  disappeared  again  during  the 
next  hour  of  waiting,  and  even  had  to  be  sent  for 
when  the  whaler  finally  did  arrive.  The  rest  of 
us  were  so  thoroughly  chilled  from  standing  out 
in  the  biting  Baltic  wind  that  we  were  only  too 
glad  to  warm  up  a  bit  by  "double-banking"  the 
oars  with  the  whaler 's  crew  on  the  pull  back  to  the 
destroyer.  The  sight  of  American  and  British 
officers  bending  to  the  sweeps  with  common  blue- 
jackets created  a  tremendous  furore  at  the  station. 
The  photographers  rushed  out  to  the  end  of  the 
jetty  to  make  a  permanent  record  of  the  astonish- 


252 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


ing  sight,  and  from  the  significant  glances  all  of 
the  Germans  were  exchanging  one  gathered  that 
they  thought  that  theirs  was  not  the  only  Navy  in 
which  there  had  been  a  revolution. 

Climbing  up  to  the  bridge  shortly  after  the 
Viceroy  got  under  weigh  for  the  run  back  to  Kiel, 
I  found  the  captain  on  watch  with  a  hulking  Num- 
ber 8-bore  shot-gun  under  his  arm,  at  which 
vicious  weapon  the  German  pilot,  pressing  as  far 
away  from  it  as  the  restricted  space  allowed,  kept 
stealing  apprehensive  sidelong  glances  with  eyes 
ostensibly  searching  the  horizon  through  his 
binoculars.  On  asking  the  captain  what  the 
artillery  was  for,  he  motioned  me  back  beside  the 
range-finder  stand,  where  he  presently  joined  me. 

'  '  I  'm  watching  for  ducks — great  place  for  them 
along  here,"  he  said  in  a  low  voice;  "but  don't 
give  it  away  to  the  Hun.  He  seems  to  think  it's 

for  him.  It's  old  B 's  gun.  He  shot  ducks 

with  it  from  the  bridge  of  his  E-boat  all  over  the 
Bight  during  the  war. ' ' 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you'd  stop  the 
destroyer  and  circle  back  to  pick  up  a  duck  in  case 
you  happepned  to  wing  one?"  I  asked  incredu- 
lously. 

"Wouldn't  I?"  he  laughed.  "Just  tumble  up 
if  you  hear  a  shot  and  see.  There's  no  finer  duck- 


To  Warnemiinde  and  Riigen         253 

boat  in  the  world  than  a  destroyer  if  you  got  the 
sea  room  to  handle  her  in." 

It  was  an  hour  or  two  later  that  I  was  shaken 
out  of  a  doze  on  a  ward-room  divan  by  a  sudden 
jar,  followed  by  the  threshing  of  reversed  screws. 
"The  skipper's  got  his  bird,"  I  thought,  and 
forthwith  scrambled  out  and  up  the  ladder,  es- 
pecially anxious  to  arrive  in  time  to  see  the  ex- 
pressions on  the  face  of  the  Germans  when  they 
realized  that  the  "mad  Englander"  was  going 
back  in  his  warship  to  pick  up  a  duck.  Compared 
to  that  it  turned  out  to  have  been  an  event  of  no 
more  than  passing  interest  which  had  happened. 
The  pilot  (perhaps  because  his  mind  was  absorbed 
in  the  menace  of  that  terrible  8-bore)  had  merely 
missed — by  three  or  four  miles  as  it  transpired 
presently — the  gate  of  the  anti-submarine  net 
fencing  off  that  neck  of  the  Baltic,  with  the  result 
that  the  Viceroy  had  barged  into  that  barrage  at 
something  like  seventeen  knots.  Cutting  through 
the  first  of  what  proved  to  be  a  double  net,  she 
brought  up  short  against  the  second,  the  while  her 
spinning  propellers  wound  in  and  chewed  to  bits 
a  considerable  length  of  the  former. 

The  seas  were  agitated  for  a  half-mile  on  either 
side  by  the  straining  of  the  outraged  booms,  while 
from  the  savagely  slashing  screws  floated  up  a 


254          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

steady  stream  of  mangled  metal  floats  like 
Wienerwursts  emerging  from  a  sausage  machine. 
Luckily,  the  cables  of  the  nets  were  rusted  and 
brittle,  so  that  the  propellers  readily  tore  loose 
from  them  without  injury.  Backing  off  clear,  the 
pilot  ran  down  the  boom  until  the  buoys  marking 
the  gate  were  sighted,  and  from  there  it  was  com- 
paratively open  going  to  Kiel,  which  we  reached  at 
nine-thirty  that  evening. 


JUTLAND   AS   A   GERMAN    SAW   IT 

IT  must  have  been  the  unspeakable  position  of 
humiliation  he  found  himself  in  as  a  consequence 
of  being  ignored,  flouted,  and  even  openly  insulted 
by  the  men  he  had  once  treated  as  no  more  worthy 
of  consideration  than  the  deck  beneath  his  feet 
that  was  responsible  for  the  fact  that  the  German 
naval  officer  with  whom  the  members  of  the  staff 
of  the  Allied  Naval  Armistice  Commission  were 
thrown  in  contact  -almost  invariably  assumed  an 
air  of  injured  martyrdom,  missing  no  oppor- 
tunity to  draw  attention  to,  and  endeavour  to 
awaken  sympathy  in,  his  sad  plight.  He  took 
advantage  of  any  kind  of  a  pretext  to  "tell  his 
troubles, "  and  when  nothing  occurred  in  the 
natural  course  of  events  to  provide  an  excuse,  he 
invented  one.  Thus,  a  Korvettenkapitan  in  one 
of  the  ships  searched  at  Wilhelmshaven  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  fact  that  a  man  to  whom  he  gave 
an  order  about  opening  a  water-tight  door  in  a 
bulkhead  slouched  over  and  started  discussing 
with  the  white-banded  representative  of  the  Work- 
men's and  Soldiers'  Council,  to  speak  at  some 

255 


256          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

length  of  the  "terrible  situation "  with  which  he 
had  been  faced  at  the  time  when  the  High  Sea 
Fleet  had  been  ordered  out  last  November  for  a 
decisive  naval  battle.  The  filthy  condition  his 
ship  was  in  furnished  the  inspiration  for  another 
officer  to  tell  at  some  length  of  how  he  had  hung 
his  head  with  shame  since  the  day  he  had  been 
baulked  of  "The  Day."  An  ex-submarine  officer 
—acting  as  pilot  in  one  of  the  British  destroyers 
in  the  Baltic — did  not  feel  that  he  could  leave  the 
ship  without  setting  right  some  comments  on  Ger- 
man naval  gunnery,  which  he  had  found  in  a 
London  paper  left  in  his  cabin. 

And  so  it  went.  Now  and  then  one  of  them, 
after  volunteering  an  account  of  something  in  his 
own  naval  experience,  would  counter  with  some 
more  or  less  shrewdly  interpolated  query  calcu- 
lated to  draw  a  " revealing "  reply;  but  for  the 
most  part  they  were  content  with  a  passive 
listener.  That  fact  relieved  considerably  the  em- 
barrassment this  action  on  the  part  of  the  Ger- 
mans placed  Allied  officers,  who  were  under  orders 
to  hold  no  "unnecessary  conversation "  in  the 
course  of  their  tours  of  inspection.  A  "mono- 
logue ' '  could  in  no  way  be  construed  as  a  "  conver- 
sation, "  and  when,  as  was  almost  invariably  the 
case,  it  was  up  on  a  subject  in  which  the  " audi- 
ence "  was  deeply  interested,  it  was  felt  that  there 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        257 

was  no  contravention  of  the  spirit  of  the  order  in 
listening  to  it.  The  statements  and  comment  I 
am  setting  down  in  this  article  were  heard  in  the 
course  of  such  "  monologues "  delivered  by  this  or 
that  German  naval  officer  with  whom  I  was  thrown 
— often  for  as  long  as  two  or  three  days  at  stretch 
—in  connection  with  the  journeys  and  inspection 
routine  of  the  party  to  which  I  chanced  to  be  at- 
tached at  the  moment.  In  only  two  or  three  in- 
stances— notably  in  the  case  of  an  officer  in  the 
flying  service  who  endeavoured  to  dissuade  us 
from  visiting  the  Zeppelin  station  at  Tondern  by 
giving  a  false  account  of  the  damage  inflicted  in 
the  course  of  the  British  bombing  raid  of  last 
summer — did  statements  made  under  these  circum- 
stances turn  out  to  be  deliberate  untruths.  On  the 
contrary,  indeed,  much  that  I  first  heard  in  this 
way  I  have  later  been  able  to  confirm  from  other 
sources,  and  to  this — statements  which  there  is 
good  reason  to  believe  are  quite  true — I  am  en- 
deavouring to  confine  myself  here.  In  matter  of 
opinions  expressed,  the  German  naval  officer  has, 
of  course,  the  same  right  to  his  own  as  has  anybody 
else,  and,  as  one  of  the  few  things  remaining  to 
him  at  the  end  of  the  war  that  he  did  have  a  right 
to,  I  did  not,  and  shall  not,  try  to  dispute  them. 

Perhaps  the  one  most  interesting  fact  brought 
out  in  connection  with  all  I  heard  in  this  way — it 


258 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules 


is  confirmed,  directly  and  indirectly,  from  so  many 
different  sources  that  I  should  consider  it  as 
definitely  established  beyond  all  doubt — was  that 
at  no  time  from  August,  1914,  to  November,  1918, 
did  the  German  seriously  plan  for  a  stand-up,  give- 
and-take  fight  to  a  finish  with  the  British  Fleet. 
Never,  not  in  the  flush  of  his  opening  triumphs  on 
land,  nor  yet  even  in  the  desperation  of  final  de- 
feat, did  the  hottest  heads  on  the  General  Naval 
Staff  at  Berlin  believe  that  there  was  sufficient 
chance  of  a  victory  in  a  gunnery  duel  to  make  it 
worth  while  trying  under  any  conditions  whatever. 
The  way  a  number  of  officers  referred  to  their  final 
attempt  to  take  the  High  Sea  Fleet  to  sea  after  it 
became  apparent  that  Ludendorff  was  beaten  be- 
yond all  hope  of  recovery  in  France,  gave  the 
impression  at  first  that  an  "all  out"  action  was 
contemplated,  that  all  was  to  be  hazarded  on  a 
single  throw,  win  or  lose.  It  is  probable,  even, 
that  the  great  majority  of  the  officers  afloat,  and 
certainly  all  of  the  men  (for  fear  of  the  results  of 
such  an  action  is  the  reason  ascribed  by  all  for  the 
series  of  mutinies  which  finally  put  the  navy  out  of 
the  reckoning  as  a  fighting  force)  believed  this  to 
be  the  case.  But  those  officers  who,  either  before 
or  after  the  event,  were  in  a  position  to  know  the 
details  of  the  real  plans,  were  in  substantial  agree- 
ment that  it  was  not  intended  to  bring  the  High 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        259 

Sea  Fleet  into  action  with  the  Grand  Fleet,  but 
rather  to  use  it  as  a  bait  to  expose  the  latter  to  a 
submarine  "  ambush "  on  a  scale  ten  times  greater 
than  anything  of  the  kind  attempted  before,  and 
then  to  lure  such  ships  as  survived  the  U-boat  at- 
tack into  a  minefield  trap.  Should  a  sufficiently 
heavy  toll  have  been  taken  of  the  capital  ships  of 
the  Grand  Fleet  in  this  way,  then — but  not  until 
then — would  the  question  of  a  general  fleet  action 
have  been  seriously  considered. 

But  although  the  General  Naval  Staff,  and 
doubtless  most  of  the  senior  officers  of  the  Ger- 
man navy,  realized  from  the  outset  that  the  High 
Sea  Fleet  would  certainly  be  hopelessly  out- 
matched in  a  gunnery  battle  and  that  their  only 
chance  of  victory  would  have  to  come  through  a 
reduction  of  the  strength  of  the  Grand  Fleet  in 
capital  ships  by  mine  or  torpedo,  the  greatest 
efforts  were  made  to  prevent  any  such  compre- 
hension of  the  situation  finding  its  way  to  the 
lower  decks.  The  men  were  constantly  assured 
that  their  fleet  was  quite  capable  of  winning  a 
decisive  victory  at  any  time  that  the  necessity 
arose,  and  there  is  not  doubt  that  they  believed 
this  implicitly — until  the  day  after  Jutland.  Then 
they  knew  the  truth,  and  they  never  recovered 
from  the  effects  of  it.  That  was  where  Jutland 
marked  very  much  more  of  an  epoch  for  the  Ger- 


260          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

man  navy  than  it  did  for  the  British.  The  latter, 
cheated  out  of  a  victory  which  was  all  but  within 
its  grasp,  was  more  eager  than  ever  to  renew  the 
fight  at  the  first  opportunity.  The  several  very 
salutary  lessons  learned  at  a  heavy  cost — and  not 
the  least  of  these  was  a  very  wholesome  respect 
for  German  gunnery — were  not  forgotten.  Struc- 
tural defects  were  corrected  in  completed  ships 
and  avoided  in  those  building.  Technical  equip- 
ment, which  had  been  found  unequal  to  the  occa- 
sion, was  replaced.  New  systems  were  evolved 
where  the  old  had  proved  wanting.  Great  as  was 
the  Grand  Fleet  increase  in  size  from  Jutland 
down  to  the  end  of  the  war,  its  increase  of  effi- 
ciency was  even  greater. 

With  the  High  Sea  Fleet,  though  several  notable 
units  were  added  to  its  strength  during  the  last 
two  years  of  the  war,  in  every  other  respect  it 
deteriorated  steadily  from  Jutland  right  down  to 
the  mutinies  which  were  the  forerunners  of  the 
great  surrender.  This  was  due,  far  more  than 
to  anything  else,  to  the  fact  that  the  real  hopeless- 
ness of  opposing  the  Grand  Fleet  in  a  give-and- 
take  fight  began  to  sink  home  to  the  Germans  from 
the  moment  the  first  opening  salvoes  of  the  latter 
smothered  the  helpless  and  disorganized  units  of 
the  High  Sea  Fleet  in  that  last  half -hour  before 
the  shifting  North  Sea  mists  and  the  deepening 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        261 

twilight  saved  them  from  the  annihilation  they 
had  invited  in  trying  to  destroy  Beatty's  battle- 
cruisers  before  Jellicoe  arrived.    What  the  most 
of  their  higher  officers  had  always  known,  the  men 
knew  from  that  day  on,  and,  cowed  by  that  knowl- 
edge, were  never  willing  to  go  into  battle  again. 
From  what  I  gathered  from  a  number  of  sources  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  affirming  that,  up  to  Jutland, 
the  men  of  the  High  Sea  Fleet  would  have  taken 
it  out  in  the  full  knowledge  that  it  was  to  meet  the 
massed  naval  might  of  Britain,  and,  moreover, 
that  they  would  have  gone  into  action  confidently 
and  bravely,  just  as  they  did  at  Jutland.    But  it 
is  equally  clear  that,  after  Jutland,   any  move 
which  the  men  themselves  knew  was  likely  to  bring 
them  into  action  with  the  British  battle  fleet  would 
instantly  have  precipitated  the  same  kind  of  revolt 
as  that  which  started  at  Kiel  last  November  and 
culminated  in  the  surrender.     It  was  the  increas- 
ing "  jumpiness"  of  the  men,  causing  them  to  sus- 
pect that  every  sally  out  of  harbour  might  be  pre- 
liminary to  the  action  which  they  had  been  living 
in  increasing  dread  of  every  day  and  night  for  the 
preceding  two  years  and  a  half,  which  finally  made 
it  practically  impossible  for  the  Germans  to  get 
out  into  the  Bight  sufficient  forces  to  protect  even 
their  mine-sweeping  craft.     As  a  consequence,  it 
is  by  no  means  unlikely  that  the  continuation  of 


262 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


the  war  for  another  few  months  might  well  have 
found  the  German  navy,  U-boats  and  all,  effectu- 
ally immobilized  in  harbour  behind  ever-widening 
barriers  of  mines. 

By  long  odds  the  most  reasoned  and  illuminative 
discussion  I  heard  of  German  naval  policy,  from 
first  to  last,  was  that  of  an  officer  who  was  Gunnery 
Lieutenant  of  the  Deutschland  at  Jutland,  and 
whom  I  met  through  his  having  had  charge  of  the 
arrangements  of  the  visits  of  the  airship  party  of 
the  Allied  Naval  Commission  to  the  various  Zep- 
pelin stations  in  the  North  Sea  littoral.  Of  a 
prominent  militarist  family — he  claimed  that  his 
father  was  a  director  of  Krupps — and  a  great 
admirer  of  the  Kaiser  (whom  I  once  heard  him 
refer  to  as  an  ' i  idealist  who  did  all  that  he  could 
to  prevent  the  war"),  he  was  extremely  well  in- 
formed on  naval  matters,  both  those  of  his  own 
country  and — so  far  as  German  information  went 
—the  Allies.  Harbouring  a  very  natural  bitter- 
ness against  the  revolution,  and  especially  against 
the  mutinous  sailors  of  the  navy,  he  spoke  the 
more  freely  because  he  felt  that  he  had  no  future 
to  look  forward  to  in  Germany,  which  (as  he  told 
me  on  a  number  of  occasions)  he  intended  to  leave 
as  soon  as  the  way  was  open  for  him  to  go  to  South 
America  or  the  Far  East.  Also,  where  he  con- 
fined himself  to  statements  of  fact  rather  than 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        263 


opinion  or  conjecture,  he  spoke  truly.  I  have  yet 
to  find  an  instance  in  which  he  made  an  intentional 
endeavour  to  create  a  false  impression. 

It  was  in  the  course  of  our  lengthy  and  some- 
what tedious  railway  journey  to  the  Zeppelin  sta- 
tion at  Nordholz  that  Korvettenkapitan  C— 
first  alluded  to  his  life  in  the  High  Sea  Fleet.  "I 
was  the  gunnery  officer  of  the  Deutschland  during 
the  first  two  years  of  the  war,"  he  volunteered  as 
he  joined  me  at  the  window  of  the  corridor  of  our 
special  car,  from  which  I  was  trying  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  suburban  area  of  stagnant  Bremer- 
haven;  "but  I  transferred  to  the  Zeppelin  service 
as  soon  as  I  could  after  the  battle  of  Horn  Keef 
because  I  felt  certain — from  the  depression  of  the 
men,  which  seemed  to  get  worse  rather  than  better 
as  time  went  on — that  there  would  never  be  an- 
other naval  battle.  Although  we  lost  few  ships 
(less  than  you  did  by  a  considerable  margin,  I 
think  I  am  correct  in  saying),  yet  the  terrible 
battering  we  received  from  only  a  part  of  the 
English  fleet,  and  especially  the  way  in  which  we 
were  utterly  smothered  during  the  short  period 
your  main  battle  fleet  was  in  action,  convinced  the 
men  that  they  were  very  lucky  to  have  got  away 
at  all,  and  seemed  to  make  them  determined  never 
to  take  chances  against  such  odds  again.  I  knew 
that  if  we  ever  got  them  into  action  again,  it  would 


264 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


have  to  be  by  tricking  them — making  them  thin! 
they  were  going  out  for  something  else — and  that 
is  why  I  felt  sure  the  day  of  our  surface  navy  was 
over,  and  why  I  went  into  the  Zeppelin  service  to 
get  beyond  contact  with  the  terrible  dry-rot  that 
began  eating  at  the  hearts  of  the  High  Sea  Fleet 
from  the  day  they  came  home  from  the  battle  of 
Horn  Eeef.  What  has  happened  since  then  has 
proved  my  fears  were  well  founded,  for  the  men, 
becoming  more  and  more  suspicious  every  time 
preparations  were  made  to  go  to  sea,  finally  re- 
fused to  go  out  at  all.  And  that  was  the  end." 

Commander  C (to  give  his  equivalent  Brit- 
ish rank)  volunteered  a  good  deal  more  about  Jut- 
land on  this  occasion,  as  well  as  of  the  strategy 
in  connection  with  those  iinal  plans  which  went 
awry  through  the  failure  of  men,  but  it  will  be 
best,  perhaps,  to  let  this  appear  in  its  proper  se- 
quence in  a  connected  account  of  what  he  told,  in 
the  course  of  the  several  days  we  were  thrown 
together,  of  the  German  naval  problems  gener- 
ally, and  his  own  experiences  and  observations  at 
Horn  Eeef  in  particular. 

"We  were  greatly  disappointed  when  England 
came  into  the  war,"  he  said,  "but  hardly  dis- 
mayed. We  had  built  all  our  ships  on  the  theory 
that  it  was  the  English  fleet  they  were  to  fight 
'against,  and  we  felt  confident  that  we  had  plans 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        265 

that  had  a  good  chance  of  ultimately  proving  suc- 
cessful. But  those  plans  did  not  contemplate — 
either  at  the  outset,  or  at  any  subsequent  stage  of 
the  war  down  to  the  very  end — a  gunnery  battle  to 
a  finish.  The  best  proof  of  that  fact  is  the  way  the 
guns  were  mounted  in  our  capital  ships,  with  four 
aft  and  only  two  forward.  That  meant  that  their 
role  was  to  inflict  what  damage  they  could  in  swift 
attacks,  and  that  they  were  expected  to  do  their 
heaviest  fighting  while  being  chased  back  to  har- 
bour. Since  the  British  fleet  had  'something  like 
a  three-to-two  advantage  over  us  in  modern  cap- 
ital ships,  and  about  two-to-one  in  weight  of 
broadside,  I  think  you  will  agree  that  this  was 
not  only  the  best  plan  for  us  to  follow,  but  prac- 
tically the  only  one. 

"I  think  it  will  hardly  surprise  you  when  I  say 
that,  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  we  knew  a 
great  deal  more  about  your  navy  than  you  did 
about  ours.  To  offset  that — and  of  much  greater 
importance — is  the  fact  that  your  knowledge  of 
our  navy  and  its  plans  during  the  war  was  far 
better  than  ours  of  yours.  You  always  seem  to 
score  in  the  end.  But  at  the  outset,  as  I  have 
said,  we  were  the  better  informed,  and,  among 
other  things,  we  knew  that  we  had  better  mines 
than  you  had,  and  (as  I  think  was  fully  demon- 
strated during  the  first  two  years)  we  had  a  far 


266 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


better  conception  in  advance  of  the  possibilities 
of  using  them — both  offensively  and  defensively 
— than  you  had.  During  the  first  two  years  and  a 
half  your  mines  turned  out  to  be  even  worse 
than  we  had  expected,  and  it  is  an  actual  fact  that 
some  of  the  more  reckless  of  our  U-boat  com- 
manders used  to  fish  them  up  and  tow  them  back 
to  base  to  make  punchbowls  of.  In  the  last  twenty 
months  you  not  only  had  two  or  three  types  of 
mine  (one  of  them  American,  I  think)  that  were 
better  than  anything  we  ever  had,  but  you  were 
also  using  them  on  a  scale,  and  with  an  effective- 
ness, we  had  never  dreamed  of. 

"We  also  thought  we  had  a  better  torpedo  than 
you  had — that  it  would  run  farther,  straighter, 
keep  depth  better,  and  do  more  damage  when  it 
struck.  I  still  think  we  have  something  of  the 
best  of  it  on  that  score,  though  at  no  time  was  our 
superiority  so  great  as  we  reckoned.  Your  tor- 
pedoes ran  better  than  they  detonated,  and — es- 
pecially in  the  first  two  years — a  very  large  num- 
ber of  fair  hits  on  all  classes  of  our  lighter  craft 
were  spoiled  by  'duds.'  This,  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
was  not  reported  nearly  so  frequently  during  the 
last  year  and  a  half. 

"But  it  was  on  the  torpedo  that  we  counted  to 
wear  down  the  British  margin  of  strength  in 
capital  ships  to  a  point  where  the  High  Sea  Fleet 


"HERCULES,"  WITH  THREE  V-CLASS  DESTROYERS  IN  KIEL  HARBOR 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        267 

would  have  a  fair  chance  of  success  in  opposing 
it.  We  expected  that  our  submarines  would  take 
a  large  and  steady  toll  of  any  warships  you  en- 
deavoured to  blockade  us  with,  and  that  they 
would  even  make  the  risk  of  patrol  greater  than 
you  would  think  it  worth  while  to  take.  Although 
we  made  an  encouraging  beginning  by  sinking 
three  cruisers,  we  were  doomed  to  heavy  disap- 
pointment over  the  U-boat  as  a  destroyer  of  war- 
ships. We  failed  to  reckon  on  the  almost  com- 
plete immunity  the  speed  of  destroyers,  light 
cruisers,  battle-cruisers,  and  even  battleships 
would  give  them  from  submarine  attack,  and  we 
never  dreamed  how  terrible  an  enemy  of  the 
U-boat  the  destroyer — especially  after  the  inven- 
tion of  the  depth-charge — would  develop  into. 
As  for  the  use  of  the  submarine  against  merchant 
shipping,  to  our  eternal  regret  we  never  saw  what 
it  could  do  until  after  we  had  tried  it.  If  any 
German  had  had  the  imagination  to  have  realized 
this  in  advance,  so  that  we  could  have  had  a  fleet 
of  a  hundred  and  fifty  U-boats  ready  to  launch  on 
an  unrestricted  campaign  against  merchant  ship- 
ping the  day  war  was  declared,  I  think  you  will 
not  deny  that  England  would  have  had  to  sur- 
render within  two  months. 

"We  also  made  the  torpedo  a  relatively  more 
important  feature  of  the  armament  of  all  of  our 


268          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

ships — from  destroyers  to  battleships — than  you 
did.  They  were  to  be  our  "last  ditch "  defence 
in  the  event  of  our  being  drawn  into  a  general 
fleet  action — just  such  an  action,  in  fact,  as  the 
battle  of  Horn  Reef  was.  We  knew  all  about 
your  gunnery  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  and 
the  fact  that  the  big-gun  target  practices  were 
only  at  moderate  ranges — mostly  under  16,000 
metres — told  us  that  you  were  not  expecting  to 
engage  us  at  greater  ranges.  But  all  the  time  we 
were  meeting  with  good  success  in  shooting  at 
ranges  up  to,  and  even  a  good  deal  over,  20,000 
metres,  and  so  we  felt  sure  of  having  all  the  best 
of  a  fight  at  such  ranges.  We  knew  that  our 
11-inch  guns  would  greatly  out-range  your  12-inch 
(perhaps  you  already  know  that  even  the  8.2-inch 
guns  of  the  Scharnhorst  and  Gneisenau  out-ranged 
the  12-inch  guns  of  the  Invincible  and  Indefatig- 
able at  the  Falkland  battle),  and  we  hoped  they 
might  even  have  the  best  of  your  13.5  's.  We  also 
knew  that  our  ships  were  better  built  than  yours 
to  withstand  the  plunging  fall  of  long-distance 
shots,  and  we  felt  sure  that  our  explosive  was 
more  powerful  than  your  lyddite.  I  am  not  sure 
that  this  proved  to  be  the  case,  though  there  is  no 
question  that  our  hits  generally  did  more  harm 
than  yours  because  more  of  them  penetrated  decks 
and  armour. 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        269 


"Feeling  confident,  then,  of  having  the  best  of  a 
long-range  action,  our  plan  was,  as  I  have  said, 
to  use  the  torpedo  as  a  'last  ditch '  defence  in 
case  the  English  fleet  tried  to  reduce  the  range  to 
one  at  which  it  could  be  sure  of  securing  a  higher 
percentage  of  hits  and  thus  making  the  greater 
weight  of  its  broadside  decisively  felt.  In  such  a 
contingency  we  planned  to  literally  fill  the  sea  with 
torpedoes,  on  the  theory  that  enough  of  them  must 
find  their  targets  to  damage  the  enemy  fleet  suffi- 
ciently to  force  it  to  open  out  the  range  again,  and 
perhaps  to  cripple  it  to  an  extent  that  would  open 
the  way  for  us  to  win  a  decisive  victory.  Theo- 
retically, this  plan  was  quite  sound,  for  it  was 
based  on  the  generally  recognized  fact  that  from 
three  to  five  torpedoes — the  number  varying  ac- 
cording to  the  range  and  the  interval  between  the 
targets — launched  one  after  the  other  at  a  line  of 
ships  cannot  fail  to  hit  at  least  one  of  them,  pro- 
viding, of  course,  that  they  all  run  properly. 

"Well,  almost  the  identical  conditions  under 
which  we  had  planned  and  practised  to  run  our 
torpedo  barrage  were  reproduced  at  Horn  Eeef 
when  the  British  battle  fleet  came  into  action  near 
the  end  of  the  day,  but  it  failed  because  the  Eng- 
lish Admiral  anticipated  it — probably  because  he 
knew  in  advance,  as  you  always  seemed  to  know 
everything  we  were  doing  or  intended  to  do,  what 


270 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


to  expect — by  turning  away  while  still  at  the  ex- 
treme limit  of  effective  torpedo  range.  Most  of 
our  spare  torpedoes  went  for  almost  nothing,  so 
far  as  damage  to  the  enemy  was  concerned,  in  that 
*  barrage/  and  it  would  have  gone  hard  with  us 
had  there  been  enough  daylight  remaining  for  the 
English  fleet  to  have  continued  the  action.  Its 
superior  speed  would  have  allowed  it  to  make  the 
range  whatever  its  commander  desired,  and — even 
before  half  of  the  battleships  of  it  were  firing — we 
were  absolutely  crushed  by  sheer  weight  of  metal, 
and  it  would  not  have  been  long  before  every  one 
of  our  ships  would  have  been  incapable  of  reply- 
ing. You  will  'see,  then,  that,  in  the  sense  that  it 
postponed  the  brunt  of  the  attack  of  the  English 
battle  fleet  attack  until  it  was  too  late  for  it  to  be 
effective,  our  torpedo  barrage  undoubtedly  saved 
the  High  Sea  Fleet  from  complete  destruction. 

"Our  lavish  expenditure  of  torpedoes  at  that 
juncture,  though,  compelled  us  to  forgo  the  great 
opportunity  which  was  now  presented  to  us  to  do 
your  fleet  heavy  damage  in  a  night  action.  Dark- 
ness, as  you  know,  goes  far  to  equalize  the  differ- 
ence in  numbers  of  opposing  fleets,  and  makes  an 
action  very  largely  a  series  of  disjointed  duels  be- 
tween ship  and  ship.  In  these  duels  the  odds  are 
all  in  favour  of  the  ship  with  the  best  system  of 
recognition,  the  most  powerful  searchlights,  and 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        271 

the  most  effective  searchlight  control.  We  be- 
lieved that  we  had  much  the  best  of  you  in  all  of 
these  particulars,  and  (although  it  was  our  plan 
to  avoid  contact  as  far  as  possible  on  account  of 
our  shortage  of  torpedoes)  such  encounters  as 
could  not  be  avoided  proved  this  to  be  true  beyond 
any  doubt.  You  seemed  to  have  no  star  shells  at 
all  (so  far  as  any  of  our  ships  reported),  and  our 
searchlights  were  not  only  more  powerful  than 
yours,  but  seemed  also  to  be  controlled  in  a  way 
to  bring  them  on  to  the  target  quicker.  It  may 
be  that  the  fact  that  our  special  night-glasses 
were  better  than  anything  of  the  kind  you  had 
contributed  to  this  result.  In  any  case,  in  almost 
every  clash  in  the  darkness  it  was  the  German's 
guns  which  opened  fire  first.  Practically  every 
one  of  our  surviving  ships  reported  this  to  have 
been  the  case,  but  with  those  that  were  lost,  of 
course,  it  is  likely  the  English  opened  up  first. 
Another  way  in  which  we  scored  decisively  in  this 
phase  of  the  action  was  through  solving  the  reply 
to  your  night  recognition  signal,  or  at  least  a  part 
of  it.  One  of  our  cruisers  managed  to  bluff  one 
of  your  destroyers  into  revealing  this,  and  then 
passed  it  on  to  as  many  of  our  own  ships  as  she 
could  get  in  touch  with.  We  only  had  the  first 
two  or  three  letters  of  the  reply  to  your  challenge, 
but  the  showing  of  even  these  is  known  to  have 


Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

been  enough  to  make  more  than  one  of  your  d< 
stroyer  commanders  hesitate  a  few  seconds  ii 
launching  a  torpedo,  only  to  realize  his  mistake 
after  he  had  been  swept  with  a  broadside  from  the 
secondary  armament  of  a  cruiser  or  battleship 
which  left  him  in  a  sinking  condition.  It  was  an 
English  destroyer  that  hesitated  at  torpedoing  the 
Deutschland  until  I  almost  blew  it  out  of  the  water 
with  my  guns,  that  afterwards  launched  a  torpedo, 
even  while  it  was  just  about  to  go  down,  that 
finished  the  Pommern,  the  flagship  of  my  squad- 
ron. " 

Commander  C—  -'s  account  of  his  personal 
observations  at  Jutland  threw  light  on  a  number 
of  points  that  the  Allied  public — and  even  those  to 
whom  the  best  information  on  the  subject  was 
available — were  never  able  to  make  up  their  mind 
upon. 

"The  English  people,"  he  said,  "to  judge 
from  what  I  read  in  your  papers,  always  deceived 
themselves  about  two  things  in  connection  with  the 
battle  you  call  Jutland.  One  of  them  was  that  the 
High  Sea  Fleet  came  out  with  the  purpose  of 
offering  battle  to  the  English  fleet,  or  at  least  en- 
deavouring to  cut  off  and  destroy  its  battle-cruiser 
squadron.  This  is  not  the  case.  Quite  to  the  con- 
trary, indeed;  it  was  the  English  fleet  that  went 
out  to  catch  us.  We  had  been  planning  for  some 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        273 

ie  a  cruiser  raid  on  the  shipping  between  Eng- 
land and  Norway — which  was  not  so  well  protected 
then,  or  even  for  a  year  and  a  half  more,  as  it  was 
the  last  year — and  the  High  Sea  Fleet  and  Von 
Hipper 's  battle-cruisers  were  out  to  back  up  the 
raiding  craft.  As  usual,  your  Intelligence  Bureau 
learned  of  this  plan,  and  the  English  fleet  came 
out  to  spoil  it.  It  was  Von  Hipper,  not  Beatty, 
who  was  surprised  when  the  battle-cruisers  sighted 
each  other.  Beatty 's  surprise  came  a  few  minutes 
later,  when  two  of  his  ships  were  blown  up  almost 
before  they  had  fired  a  shot.  That  seemed  to  vin- 
dicate, right  then  and  there,  our  belief  in  our 
superior  gunnery  and  the  inferior  construction  of 
the  English  ships.  Unfortunately,  there  was 
nothing  quite  so  striking  occurred  after  that 
to  support  that  vindication.  The  other  English 
battle-cruiser,  and  the  several  armoured  cruisers, 
sunk  were  destroyed  as  a  consequence  of  exposing 
themselves  to  overwhelming  fire.  It  was  the 
chance  of  finishing  off  all  the  English  battle- 
cruisers  before  the  battle  fleet  came  to  their  rescue 
that  tempted  Von  Scheer  to  follow  Beatty  north, 
and  as  a  consequence  he  was  all  but  drawn  into  the 
general  action  that  it  was  his  desire  to  avoid  above 
anything  else. 

* l  The  other  thing  that  the  English  naval  critics 
(although  I  think  your  Intelligence  Bureau  must 


274 


To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 


have  had  the  real  facts  before  very  long)  deceived 
themselves  and  the  public  about  was  in  the  matter 
of  Zeppelin  reconnaissance  during,  and  previous 
to,  the  Horn  Eeef  battle.  They  have  continued  to 
state  from  that  day  right  down  to  the  end  of  the 
war  that  it  was  the  German  airships  which  warned 
Von  Scheer  of  the  approach  of  Jellicoe,  and  so 
enabled  the  High  Sea  Fleet  to  escape.  Perhaps 
the  most  conclusive  evidence  that  we  did  not  have 
airship  reconnaissance  was  the  fact  that  Von 
Scheer  was  not  only  drawn  into  action  with 
Jellicoe,  but  that  he  even  got  into  a  position  where 
he  could  not  prevent  the  English  ships  from  pass- 
ing to  the  east  of  him — that  is,  between  him  and 
his  bases.  I  will  hardly  need  to  tell  you  that 
neither  of  these  things  would  have  happened  if 
we  had  had  airships  to  keep  us  advised  of  the 
whereabouts  of  your  battle  fleet.  It  was  our  in- 
tention to  have  had  Zeppelin  scouts  preceding  us 
into  the  North  Sea  on  this  occasion — as  we  always 
have  done  when  practicable — but  the  weather  con- 
ditions were  not  favourable.  We  did  have  Zeppe- 
lins out  on  the  following  day,  and  these,  I  have 
read,  were  sighted  by  the  English.  But  if  any 
were  reported  on  the  day  of  the  battle,  I  can  only 
say  it  was  a  mistake.  It  is  very  easy  to  mistake 
a  small  round  cloud,  moving  with  the  wind,  for  a 
foreshortened  Zeppelin,  especially  if  you  are  ex- 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        275 

pecting  an  airship  to  appear  in  that  quarter  of  the 
sky." 

Of  the  opening  phases  of  the  Jutland  battle 
Commander  C did  not  see  a  great  deal  per- 
sonally. "We  were  steaming  at  a  moderate 
speed,"  he  said,  "when  Von  Hipper 's  signal  was 
received  stating  he  was  engaging  enemy  battle- 
cruisers  and  leading  them  south — that  is,  in  the 
direction  from  which  we  were  approaching.  As 
there  were  a  number  of  pre-dreadnoughts  in 
the  fleet,  its  speed — as  long  as  it  kept  together 
—was  limited  to  the  speed  of  these.  In  knots 
we  were  doing  perhaps  sixteen  when  the  first 
signal  was  received,  and  even  after  forming 
battle  line  this  speed  was  not  materially  in- 
creased for  some  time.  I  understood  the  rea- 
son for  this  when  I  heard  that  the  engine-room 
had  been  ordered  to  make  no  more  smoke  than 
was  positively  necessary.  We  had  given  much 
attention  to  regulating  draught,  and  on  this  oc- 
casion it  was  only  a  few  minutes  before  there 
was  hardly  more  than  a  light  grey  cloud  issuing 
from  every  funnel  the  whole  length  of  the  line. 
The  idea,  of  course,  was  to  prevent  the  English 
ships  from  finding  out  any  sooner  than  could  be 
helped  that  they  were  being  led  into  an  ' ambush.' 
As  long  as  we  did  not  increase  speed  it  was  easy 
to  keep  down  the  smoke,  and  I  am  sure  that  the 


276 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


first  evidence  the  enemy  had  of  the  presence  of 
the  High  Sea  Fleet  was  when  they  saw  our  masts 
and  funnels.  But  we  saw  them  before  that — we 
saw  the  two  great  towers  of  smoke  that  went  high 
up  into  the  sky  when  two  of  them  blew  up,  and 
we  saw  the  smoke  from  their  funnels  half  an  hour 
before  their  topmasts  came  above  the  horizon.  At 
this  time,  although  all  of  the  ships  of  the  High  Sea 
Fleet  were  coal  burners,  they  were  making  less 
smoke  than  the  four  oil-burning  ships  of  the  Queen 
Elizabeth  class,  which  we  sighted  not  long  after 
the  English  battle-cruisers.  As  soon  as  we  began 
to  increase  speed,  of  course,  we  made  more  smoke 
than  they  did. 

"The  four  remaining  English  battle-cruisers 
turned  north  as  soon  as  they  sighted  us,  and  I  do 
not  think  the  fire  of  the  High  Sea  Fleet  did  them 
much  harm.  They  drew  away  from  us  very 
rapidly,  of  course,  so  that  our  '  ambush '  plan  did 
not  come  to  anything  after  all.  A  squadron  of 
English  light  cruisers,  which  were  leading  the 
battle-cruisers  when  we  first  sighted  them,  almost 
fell  into  the  trap,  though,  or,  at  any  rate,  their 
very  brave  (or  very  foolish)  action  in  standing  on 
until  they  were  but  little  over  10,000  metres  from 
the  head  of  our  line  gave  us  the  best  kind  of  a 
chance  to  sink  the  lot  of  them.  That  we  did  not 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        277 

do  this  was  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
ships  of  our  line  were  still  endeavouring  to  reach 
the  English  battle-cruisers  with  long-range  fire, 
and  partly  (I  must  admit  it,  though  my  own  guns 
were  among  those  that  failed  to  find  their  mark) 
to  poor  shooting.  These  light  cruisers  did  not 
turn  until  we  opened  fire  at  something  over  10,000 
metres;  but  although  all  our  squadron  concen- 
trated upon  them  during  the  hour  and  more  be- 
fore the  great  speed  they  put  on  took  them  out  of 
range,  none  of  them  were  sunk,  and  I  am  not  even 
sure  that  any  was  badly  hit. 

1 '  When  the  four  ships  of  the  Queen  Elizabeth 
class  came  into  action  there  was  a  while  when 
they  were  receiving  the  concentrated  fire  of  prac- 
tically the  whole  High  Sea  Fleet,  and  possibly 
some  of  that  of  our  battle-cruisers  as  well.  Yet 
it  did  not  appear  that — beyond  putting  one  of 
them  (which  we  later  learned  was  the  War  spite) 
out  of  control  for  a  while — we  did  them  much  dam- 
age. The  weight  of  our  fire  seemed  to  affect 
theirs  a  good  deal,  though,  and  at  this  stage  of 
the  fight  they  did  not  score  many  hits  upon  those 
of  our  ships — it  was  upon  the  squadron  of  Konigs 
that  they  seemed  trying  to  concentrate — that  they 
gave  their  attention  to.  Later,  when  the  effort  to 
destroy  several  of  the  newly  arrived  squadron  of 


278 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


English  battle-cruisers  and  armoured  cruisers 
drew  a  part  of  our  fire,  their  heavy  shells  did  much 
damage. 

"The  High  Sea  Fleet's  line  became  consider- 
ably broken  and  extended  in  the  course  of  the  pur- 
suit of  the  English  battle-cruisers  and  the  Queen 
Elizabeths,  the  swifter  Konigs  steaming  out  well 
in  advance  in  an  effort  to  destroy  some  of  the 
English  ships  before  their  battle  fleet  came  into 
action,  and  my  own  squadron  dropping  a  good 
way  astern.  That  was  the  reason  that  my  ship 
neither  gave  nor  received  much  punishment  in 
the  daylight  action.  It  was  our  battle-cruisers 
and  the  more  modern  battleships  of  the  High  Sea 
Fleet — principally  the  latter — which,  tricked  by 
the  bad  visibility,  suddenly  found  themselves  well 
inside  the  range  of  the  deployed  battleships  of 
the  main  English  fleet.  I  can  only  say  that  I 
am  thankful  that  I  did  not  have  to  experience  at 
first  hand  the  example  they  received  of  what  it 
meant  to  face  the  full  fire  of  that  fleet.  The 
English  shooting,  which  opened  a  little  wild  on 
account  of  the  mists,  soon  steadied  down,  and  I 
have  heard  officers  of  four  or  five  of  our  ships  say 
that  it  was  becoming  impossible  to  make  reply 
with  their  guns  when  darkness  broke  off  the  action. 
I  have  already  told  you  how  our  torpedo  'bar- 
rage'— in  forcing  the  English  fleet  to  sheer  off 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        279 


until  it  was  too  late  for  decisive  action — saved  a 
large  part,  if  not  all,  of  our  fleet  from  destruction. 
What  would  have  happened  in  the  event  that  the 
attack  had  been  pressed,  no  one  can  say.  It  would 
all  have  depended  upon  the  extent  of  the  damage 
inflicted  by  our  torpedoes.  I  can  only  say  that— 
as  it  was  a  contingency  we  had  prepared  for  by 
long  practice — Jellicoe  would  only  have  been  play- 
ing into  our  hands  in  taking  his  whole  fleet  inside 
effective  torpedo  range,  and  I  have  confidence 
enough  in  the  plan  to  wish  that  he  had  tried  it. 
It  would  have  meant  a  shorter  war  whatever  hap- 
pened, and,  what  is  more,  anything  would  have 
been  better  for  us  than  what  did  come  to  pass — 
two  years  of  gradual  paralysis  of  the  German 
navy,  with  a  disgraceful  surrender  at  the  end. 

"As  I  have  said,  we  were  anxious  to  avoid  a 
night  action  on  account  of  our  shortage  of  tor- 
pedoes, however  much  such  an  action  would  have 
been  to  our  advantage  had  not  our  supply  of  these 
been  so  nearly  exhausted.  So  we  were  a  good 
deal  relieved  when  it  became  apparent  that  the 
enemy  were  not  making  any  special  effort  to  get  in 
touch  with  us  again  after  darkness  fell.  As  a 
consequence  of  this  disinclination  of  both  sides 
to  seek  an  engagement,  such  clashes  as  did  occur 
were  the  sequel  to  chance  encounters  in  the  dark, 
and  in  most  cases  they  seem  to  have  been  broken 


280          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

off  by  the  common  desire  of  both  parties.  Some 
of  your  destroyers  persisted  in  their  attacks  when- 
ever they  got  in  touch  with  one  of  our  ships,  but 
we  usually  made  them  pay  a  very  heavy  price  for 
the  damage  inflicted. 

"Von  Scheer  took  the  High  Sea  Fleet  back  to 
harbour  by  passing  astern  of  the  English  battle 
fleet,  which  had  continued  on  to  the  south.  I 
think  I  am  correct  in  saying  that  none  of  the 
capital  ships  of  either  fleet  were  in  action  with 
those  of  the  other  after  dark.  There  were  two  or 
three  brushes  between  cruisers  and  a  good  many 
between  destroyers  and  various  classes  of  heavier 
ships.  In  fact,  our  principal  difficulties  arose 
through  running  into  several  flotillas  of  destroyers 
which  seemed  to  have  straggled  from  the 
squadrons  to  which  they  had  been  attached.  My 
squadron,  with  a  division  of  cruisers,  ran  right 
through  a  flotilla  of  about  a  dozen  large  English 
destroyers,  and  it  would  be  hard  to  say  which 
had  the  worst  of  it.  We  lost  the  Pommern  (it 
would  have  been  my  ship,  the  Deutschland,  had 
not  the  line  been  reversed  a  few  minutes  pre- 
viously) and  a  cruiser,  and  had  two  other  cruisers 
badly  damaged,  one  from  being  rammed  by  a  little 
fighting-cock  of  a  destroyer  which  must  have  com- 
mitted suicide  in  doing  it.  We  sank  two  or  three 
of  the  destroyers  by  gun-fire,  and  left  two  or  three 


Jutland  as  a  German  Saw  It        281 


more  stopped  and  looking  about  to  blow  up.  Two 
of  them  were  seen  to  be  in  collision,  and  there 
was  also  a  report  that  they  were  firing  at  each 
other  in  the  melee,  but  that  was  not  corroborated. 
This  fight  only  lasted  a  few  minutes,  and  we  saw 
no  more  English  ships  of  any  kind  on  our  way 
back  to  harbour. 

"In  the  matter  of  the  losses  at  Horn  Eeef,  we 
have  never  had  any  doubt  that  those  of  the  English 
were  much  heavier  than  ours,  even  on  your  own 
admissions.  And  since  we  inflicted  those  losses 
with  a  fleet  of  not  much  over  half  the  size  of  yours, 
we  have  always  felt  justified  in  claiming  the  battle 
to  have  been  a  German  victory.  The  Lutzow  was 
our  only  really  serious  loss,  though  the  other 
battle-cruisers — especially  the  Derfflinger  and 
Seydlitz — were  of  little  use  for  many  months,  so 
badly  had  they  been  battered  by  gun-fire.  The 
battleship  and  cruisers  sunk  were  out  of  date,  and 
we  lost  only  one  modern  light  cruiser.  We  may 
have  lost  as  many  destroyers  as  you  did,  though 
yours  would  have  footed  up  to  a  greater  tonnage, 
as  they  average  larger  than  ours.  We  made  a 
great  mistake  in  concealing  the  loss  of  the  Lutzow 
for  several  days,  for,  after  that,  the  people  never 
stopped  thinking  that  there  were  other  and  greater 
losses  not  announced. 

But  although  the  English  losses  must  have 


282 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


been  much  greater  than  ours,  I  am  not  sure  that 
they  were  enough  greater  to  offset  the  loss  of  mo- 
rale in  the  men  of  the  German  fleet.  As  I  have 
said,  I  do  not  think — unless  we  had  tricked  them 
into  it,  as  we  tried  so  hard  to  do  at  the  end — that 
we  could  ever  again  have  got  them  to  take  their 
ships  out  in  the  full  knowledge  that  they  were  in 
for  a  fight  to  a  finish  with  the  English  battle  fleet. 
It  would  have  been  better  that  they  had  all  been 
lost  fighting  «at  Horn  Eeef  than  that  they  should 
have  survived  to  bring  upon  themselves  and  their 
officers  a  disgrace  the  like  of  which  has  never  been 
known  in  naval  history. " 


XI 


BACK    TO    BASE 

THE  German  Naval  Armistice  Commission,  per- 
haps as  a  reaction  from  its  belligerent  attitude  at 
the  first  conference  at  Kiel,  manifested  an  in- 
creasing amenability  to  reason  with  every  day 
that  passed,  as  a  consequence  of  which  the  work 
of  the  Allied  Commission  was  pushed  to  a  rapid 
completion.  The  search  of  the  warships  was  com- 
pleted in  a  couple  of  days,  and  the  decision  to  limit 
the  inspection  of  air  stations  to  those  west  of 
Kiigen  reduced  the  visits  of  this  character  to 
three,  all  easily  reached  by  destroyers.  Of  the 
town  of  Kiel,  nothing  was  seen  at  close  quarters, 
visits  in  that  vicinity  being  limited  to  the  dock- 
yard, ships  in  the  harbour,  and  the  seaplane  sta- 
tion of  Holtenau,  near  the  entrance  to  the  canal. 

Although  the  Allied  ships  under  embargo  hardly 
arrived  at  Kiel  for  inspection  at  the  rate  promised, 
there  was  little  to  indicate  that  the  Germans  were 
endeavouring  to  evade  their  promise  of  doing 
everything  possible  to  facilitate  the  return  of  these 
to  the  Tyne  at  the  earliest  possible  moment.  The 
City  of  Leeds,  a  powerfully  engined  little  packet 

283 


284 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


which  had  been  on  the  Hamburg-Harwich  run  be- 
fore the  war,  furnished  the  only  glaring  instance 
of  deliberate  bad  faith.  The  German  Shipping 
Commission,  declaring  that  her  crew  had  ruined 
her  engines  and  boilers  by  pouring  tar  into  them 
when  she  was  seized,  claimed  that  she  had  been 
quite  useless  since  that  time,  and  disclaimed  any 
responsibility  for  reconditioning  her.  On  inspec- 
tion by  the  Allied  Shipping  Commission,  the  state- 
ment that  the  engines  had  been  damaged  by  any- 
thing but  use  and  neglect  was  proved  to  be  abso- 
lutely false.  Why  the  Germans  should  have  told 
so  futile  a  lie  was  not  fully  explained,  though  as  a 
possible  reason  it  was  suggested  that  some  private 
party,  desiring  to  keep  the  ship  in  his  hands,  had 
made  a  false  report  of  her  condition  to  the  Ship- 
ping Commission. 

The  arrival  and  departure  of  Allied  prisoners 
of  war  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  features 
of  the  week  in  Kiel.  The  most  of  these  were 
British — picked  up  by  one  or  another  of  the  de- 
stroyers at  this  or  that  port  touched  at — but  there 
was  one  large  party  of  French,  from  a  camp  near 
Kiel,  and  several  Belgians,  Serbs,  and  Italians 
from  heaven  knows  where.  These  were  all  made 
as  comfortable  as  possible  in  the  Hercules,  and 
dispatched  to  England  in  the  next  mail  destroyer. 
Except  for  a  man  now  and  then  who  was  suffering 


I 


Back  to  Base 


285 


from  a  neglected  wound,  they  were  in  fairly  good 
condition,  a  fact,  however,  which  did  not  lessen 
their  almost  rapturous  enjoyment  of  the  heaping 
pannikins  of  "good  greasy  grub"  (as  one  of  them 
put  it)  that  was  theirs  for  the  asking  at  any  hour 
of  the  day  they  cared  to  slip  up  to  the  galley. 
Their  delight  in  the  band,  in  the  ship 's  kinema,  in 
" doubling  round"  for  exercise  in  the  morning,  in 
anything  and  everything  in  the  life  in  this  their 
halfway  station  on  the  road  home  was  a  joy  to 
watch. 

Some  of  the  British  prisoners  came  from  the 
same  towns  or  counties  as  did  men  of  the  ship's 
company,  and  the  exchange  of  reminiscences  often 
went  on  far  into  the  night.  Passing  across  the 
flat  between  the  ward-room  and  the  commission- 
room  late  one  evening,  I  heard  a  Lancastrian  voice 
from  a  roll  of  blankets  on  the  deck  protesting  to  a 
bluejacket  in  the  hammock  above  that  "Jinny 
X—  >  of  Wigan  didn't  have  yellow  hair  when 
he  (the  owner  of  the  voice)  used  to  know  her,  and 
that,  in  fact,  he'd  always  thought  her  rather  a 
"shy  >un." 

"Thot  was  afore  she  worked  in  a  'T.N.T.' 
fact'ry,"  replied  the  "hammock,"  with  an  into- 
nation suggesting  that  he  felt  that  was  sufficient 
explanation  of  both  changes. 

A  good  deal  of  rivalry  developed  between  the 


286          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

four  escorting  destroyers  in  the  matter  of  picking 
up  prisoners,  and  to  hear  their  officers  discussing 
their  "bags"  or  "hauls"  when  they  foregathered 
at  night  in  the  ward-room  of  the  Hercules  re- 
minded one  of  campers  drifting  in  at  the  end  of 
the  day  and  yarning  of  the  ducks  they  had  shot 
and  the  fish  they  had  caught.  "If  we  could  have 
waited  another  half -hour  twenty  more  were  com- 
ing with  us,"  claims  Venetia.  "But  even  with 
those,"  replies  Vidette,  "you  would  not  have  been 
anywhere  near  our  sixty-nine. '  y  It  was  this  latter 
"bag,"  indeed,  which  proved  the  record  one  of  the 
"season,"  both  in  numbers  and  "quality,"  for  it 
consisted  entirely  of  non-commissioned  officers 
from  a  camp  near  Hamburg. 

The  same  cringing  attempts  at  ingratiation  and 
conciliation  which  had  been  so  much  in  evidence  in 
the  attitude  of  the  civil  population  toward  parties 
from  the  Commission  when  they  met  in  streets  or 
stations  seem  also  to  have  been  consistently  prac- 
tised in  the  case  of  prisoners  about  to  be  repatri- 
ated. Although  the  German  takes  naturally  and 
easily  to  this  kind  of  thing,  just  as  he  did  to  his 
schrecklichkeit  and  general  brutalities,  there  was 
much  in  the  way  he  went  about  making  himself 
pleasant  to  returning  prisoners  that  bore  the 
marks  of  official  inspiration.  Several  men  who 
came  to  the  Hercules  brought  copies  of  circular 


Back  to  Base 


287 


letters  in  English  which,  after  pointing  out  that 
they  had  invariably  been  treated  with  the  greatest 
courtesy  and  consideration  possible  under  the  very 
trying  circumstances  Germany  found  herself  in  on 
account  of  the  blockade,  hoped  that  they  would 
bear  no  ill  will  away  with  them,  and  that  the 
years  to  come  might  bring  them  back  to  Germany 
under  happier  circumstances.  The  screeds  really 
had  much  the  tone  of  an  apologetic  country  host 's 
farewell  to  guests  whom  he  has  had  to  keep  on 
short  commons  on  account  of  being  snowed  in  or  a 
breakdown  on  the  line. 

One  of  the  best  of  them  was  addressed  to 
"English  Gentlemen, "  and  went  on  as  follows:— 

"You  are  about  to  leave  the  newest,  and  what 
we  intend  to  make  the  freest,  republic  in  the  world. 
We  very  much  regret  that  you  saw  so  little  of 
what  aroused  our  pride  in  the  former  Germany— 
her  arts,  sciences,  model  cites,  theatres,  schools, 
industries,  and  social  institutions,  as  well  as  the 
beauties  of  our  scenery  and  the  real  soul  of  our 
people,  akin  in  so  many  things  to  your  own. 

"But  these  things  will  remain  a  part  of  the  new 
Germany.  Once  the  barriers  of  artificial  hatred 
and  misunderstanding  have  fallen,  we  hope  that 
you  will  learn  to  know,  in  happier  times,  these 
grander  features  of  the  land  whose  unwilling 
guests  you  have  been.  A  barbed  wire  enclosure 


288 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


is  not  the  proper  place  from  which  to  survey  or 
judge  a  great  nation.  There  will  be  no  barbed 
wire  enclosure  in  the  Germany  to  which  you  will 
return  a  few  months  hence.  In  the  meantime  we 
feel  that  we  can  count  upon  you,  forgetting  the 
unpleasanter  features  of  your  enforced  sojourn 
with  us,  to  exert  your  influence  to  reunite  the 
bonds  of  friendship  and  commerce  which  were 
bringing  our  countries  ever  closer  and  closer  to- 
gether before  their  unfortunate  severance  by  the 
sword  of  war,  and  upon  the  knitting  up  again  of 
which  the  future  of  both  so  greatly  depends. 

' 1  Three  cheers  for  peace  and  good  will  to  all 
mankind ! ' ' 

Eather  a  delicate  little  touch,  that  "  bonds  of 
commerce ' '  one ! 

Unfortunately,  the  language  in  which  most  of 
the  prisoners  described  the  state  of  mind  which 
this  kind  of  thing  left  them  in  is  not  quite  suited 
for  publication.  It  was  one  of  the  mildest  of 
them — a  London  cockney  who  seemed  never  quite 
to  have  got  back  all  the  blood  he  lost  when  his 
thigh  was  ripped  open  with  shrapnel  at  the  assault 
on  Thiepval — who  said  that  "Jerry"  never  would 
get  over  being  surprised  when  "a  bloke  called  'im 

a  b y  blighter  arter  'e  'd  tried  to  shove  a  ersatz 

fag  on  you  an7  'oped  you  w'udn't  be  bearin'  'im 
any  'ard  feelin's  in  the  years  to  come." 


Back  to  Base  289 

The  attitude  that  German  girls  and  women  ap- 
pear to  have  adopted  toward  Allied,  and  especially 
British,  prisoners  from  the  time  the  armistice 
went  into  force  is  not  a  pleasant  thing  to  write  of, 
and  I  confine  myself  to  a  single  observation  which 
an  old  sergeant  of  the  "Contemptibles" — one 
of  the  sixty-nine  that  the  Vidette  brought  from 
Hamburg — made  on  the  subject.  It  was  one  of 
the  most  witheringly  biting  characterizations  of  a 
nation  I  have  ever  heard  fall  from  the  lips  of  any 
man.  He  had  been  telling  me  in  a  humorous  sort 
of  way  of  "raspberry  leaf  tea,"  ersatz  coffee  of 
various  kinds,  paper  sheets,  and  various  and  sun- 
dry other  substitutes,  and  then,  switched  off  to  the 
subject  by  a  question  regarding  a  statement  a  Ger- 
man officer  had  been  heard  to  make  about  the  rela- 
tions of  prisoners  and  women  of  the  country,  he 
spoke  of  the  ways  of  the  girls  of  Hamburg  since 
the  armistice. 

"There  is  no  doubt,"  he  said,  "that  the  young 
of  both  sexes  have  been  getting  more  and  more 
shameless  in  their  morals  ever  since  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  but  it  is  only  since  we  were  practically 
set  free  by  the  armistice  that  the  state  of  things 
has  come  home  to  prisoners.  I  don't  think  that 
there  are  very  many  British  prisoners — certainly 
no  man  that  I  know  personally — who  have  had 
anything  to  do  with  these  young  hussies ;  but  that 


290          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

is  not  the  fault  of  the  girls,  for  they  have  pestered 
us  only  less  in  our  camp  than  upon  the  street. 
It's  principally  because  we  have  a  bit  of  money 
now,  and  sometimes  a  bit  of  food  that  isn't  ersatz. 
I  don't  think  I'm  exaggerating  very  much,  sir, 
when  I  say  that  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  girls  of  the 
lower  classes  in  Hamburg  would  sell  themselves 
for  a  cake  of  toilet  soap  or  a  sixpenny  packet  of 
biscuits.  Ersatz  food  and  ersatz  women!  By 
God,  sir,  Germany's  a  country  of  substitutes  and 
prostitutes,  and  it's  glad  I  am  to  be  seeing  the 
last  of  it!" 

I  have  yet  to  hear  the  Germany  of  today 
summed  up  more  scathingly  than  that. 

Speaking  of  the  moral  degeneracy  of  Germany, 
a  poster  found  by  a  member  of  the  Commission  in 
a  train  by  which  he  was  travelling  sheds  an  inter- 
esting light  on  the  subject.  It  was  addressed  to 
the  "  Youth  of  Wilhelmshaven  and  Riistringen" 
by  the  Council  of  Workmen  and  Soldiers,  and  the 
following  is  a  rough  translation. 

"The  German  youth  has  been  a  witness  of  the 
great  liberating  act  of  the  German  Eevolution. 
It  has  witnessed  how  the  fetters  of  the  old  regime 
were  burst  and  Freedom  made  her  entry  into  the 
stronghold  of  reaction,  the  Prussian  military 
state.  And  it  is  the  youth  of  today  which  will 
reap  the  fruits  of  this  great  change.  It  will  one 


Back  to  Base 


291 


day  find  as  an  accomplished  fact  all  that  for  which 
the  best  of  the  people  have  sacrificed  themselves. 

"  Therefore  the  most  serious  duties  are  laid 
upon  the  youth  of  today,  to  which  it  is  becoming 
increasingly  necessary  to  draw  their  attention. 
Complaints  are  unfortunately  increasing  of  late 
that.the  youth  is  lapsing  more  and  more  into  moral 
anarchy,  which  carries  with  it  the  most  serious 
dangers  for  the  future.  Eevolution  does  not  mean 
disorder,  but  a  new  order.  Eemember  that  the 
whole  future  of  Germany  depends  upon  you ;  you 
are  the  trustees  of  the  future.  Be  conscious  of 
the  great  responsibility  which  rests  today  upon 
your  young  shoulders.  .  .  .  You  must  now  learn 
to  be  equal  to  the  task  which  awaits  you.  Obey 
your  teachers  and  leaders.  That  is  the  first  de- 
mand made  upon  all  today. 

"We  expect,  therefore,  that  you  take  this  warn- 
ing to  heart,  and  that  we  may  not  be  forced  to  take 
stronger  measures  against  those  among  you  who 

either  cannot  or  will  not  submit ! ' ' 

***** 

There  was  a  suggestion  of  power  and  strength 
in  the  name  itself,  and  in  setting  out  to  inspect  the 
Great  Belt  Forts  there  were  few  in  the  party  who 
had  not  visions  of  uncovering  the  secrets  of  some- 
thing very  much  in  the  nature  of  a  Baltic  Gibraltar 
or  Heligoland.  "Number  One"  or  the  "Inter- 


292          To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 

national"  sub-commission  turned  out  in  full 
strength  in  anticipation  of  what  had  generally 
been  regarded  as  the  crowning,  as  it  was  the  con- 
cluding, event  of  the  visit.  The  very  protestations 
of  the  Germans  only  whetted  their  interest  the 
keener,  for  it  was  a  precisely  similar  line  to  one 
they  had  taken  in  the  matter  of  the  visit  to  Ton- 
dern,  where  there  had  been  something  worth  see- 
ing. "Look  out  for  surprises  in  connection  with 
the  *  Great  Belt'  inspection, "  was  the  word,  and 
every  one  in  any  way  entitled  to  attach  himself  to 
what  was  to  be  the  last  party  landed  before  the 
return  of  the  Commission  to  England  made  ar- 
rangements to  do  so. 

Brave  with  swords,  bright  with  brass  hats, 
aglitter  with  aiguillettes  was  the  imposing  line  of 
French,  British,  Italian,  American  and  Japanese 
officers  who  filed  across  from  the  Hercules  to  the 
Verdun  an  hour  before  dawn  on  the  morning  of 
December  16.  An  hour  after  darkness  descended, 
wet  with  rain,  bespattered  with  mud,  ashiver  with 
cold,  those  same  officers  straggled  back  to  the 
Hercules  again.  This  is  the  order  in  which  one 
of  them  summed  up  the  day 's  observation :  ' '  The 
most  notable  event  of  the  inspection/'  he  said  as 
he  warmed  his  chilled  frame  before  the  ward-room 
fire,  "was  the  sight  of  the  first  pig  we  have  clapped 
eyes  on  in  Germany;  the  next  so  was  meeting  a 


Back  to  Base  293 

Hun  with  enough  of  a  sense  of  humour  to  take  us 
three  miles  round  by  a  muddy  road  and  over 
ploughed  fields  and  deep  ditches  to  a  point  he 
could  have  reached  by  a  mile  of  comparatively  dry 
railway  track ;  and  the  third  was  a  drive  through 
ten  miles  of  Schleswig  countryside  that  was 
beautiful  beyond  words,  even  in  the  pelting  rain. 
The  Great  Belt  Forts?  Oh,  yes,  we  saw  them. 
They  were  five  holes  in  the  ground  on  top  of  one 
hill,  four  holes  in  the  ground  on  the  top  of  another 
fifteen  miles  away,  and  a  dozen  or  so  ancient  guns 
dumped  into  the  hold  of  a  tug.  But — let's  talk 
about  the  pig. " 

There  is  not  much  that  I  can  add  to  ths  succinct 
summary  of  the  inspection  of  the  forts  of  the 
"Baltic  Gibraltar. "  What  the  sub-commission 
saw — or  rather  failed  to  see — there  went  a  long 
way  toward  confirming  the  impression  (which  had 
been  growing  stronger  ever  since  the  arrival  of 
the  Hercules  at  Wilhelmshaven)  that  Germany 
had  depended  upon  mines  rather  than  guns  for 
the  defence  of  her  coasts.  The  porker  mentioned 
was  the  one  I  alluded  to  in  an  earlier  chapter  as 
just  failing  to  win  the  officer  sighting  it  the  pool 
which  was  to  go  to  the  first  man  who  saw  a  pig  in 
Germany,  because  an  Irish-American  member  of 
the  party  had  testified  that  it  had  "died  from  hog 
cholera  an  hour  before  it  had  been  killed, "  The 


294 


To  Kiel  in  the  " Hercules" 


lovely  stretch  of  farming  country  driven  throng] 
showed  many  signs  of  its  Danish  character,  and  at 
several  windows  I  even  saw  the  red-and-white  flag 
of  the  mother  country  discreetly  displayed.     This 
region,  of  course,  falls  well  north  of  the  line  that 

is  expected  to  form  the  new  Danish  boundary. 

***** 

At  the  final  conference  with  the  German  Naval 
Armistice   Commission,   which  was   held   in  the 
Hercules  on  the  morning  of  the  17th,  Admiral 
Goette  and  his  associates,  in  striking  contrast  to 
their  belligerent  attitude  at  the  first  meeting  in 
Kiel,  proved  thoroughly  docile  and  conciliatory. 
All  of  the  important  points  at  issue  were  conceded 
—including  the  surrender  of  submarines  building 
and  the  delivery  of  the  Baden  in  place  of  Macken- 
sen — and  tentative  arrangements  were  made  for 
future  visits  of  special  Allied  Commissions  when- 
ever these  should  be  deemed  necessary  to  insure 
the  enforcement  of  the  provisions  of  the  armistice. 
Work  on  the  reconditioning  of  all  Allied  merchant 
ships  was  to  be  given  precedence  over  everything 
else.     Considering  that  he  had  no  trumps  either 
in  his  hands  or  up  his   sleeve,  Admiral  Goette 
played  his  end  of  the  game  with  considerable  skill. 
Such  futile  attempts  at  "bluffing"  as  he  made 
were  invariably  traceable  to  pressure  exerted  upon 
him  from  the  "outside,"  probably  Berlin.     Per- 


Back  to  Base  295 

sonally,  in  spite  of  the  severe  nervous  strain  he 
was  under  (the  effects  of  which  were  increasingly 
noticeable  at  every  succeeding  conference),  he  de- 
ported himself  with  a  dignity  compatible  with  his 
heavy  responsibilities.  The  same  may  be  said  of 
Captain  Von  Miiller,  which  is  perhaps  as  far  down 
the  list  as  it  would  be  charitable  to  go  in  this 

connection. 

#  *  #  *  * 

"Weighing  anchor  at  noon  of  the  18th,  the 
Hercules  was  locked  through  into  the  canal  in 
good  time  to  see  in  daylight  that  section  which  had 
been  passed  in  darkness  in  coming  through  from 
the  North  Sea.  A  rain,  which  turned  into  soft 
snow  as  the  afternoon  lengthened,  was  responsible 
for  rather  less  frequent  and  numerous  crowds  of 
spectators  than  on  the  previous  passage.  The 
ubiquitous  Russian  prisoner  was  still  much  in  evi- 
dence. An  especially  pathetic  figure  was  that  of 
a  lone  poilu — still  in  horizon  blue,  with  the  skirts 
of  his  bedraggled  overcoat  buttoned  back  in  char- 
acteristic fashion — whom  I  sighted  just  before 
dark.  Leaning  dejectedly  on  his  hoe  in  a  beet- 
field,  he  watched  the  Hercules  pass  without  so 
much  as  lifting  a  finger.  Most  likely  the  unlucky 
chap  took  her  for  a  German,  for  the  rapturous 
demonstrations  with  which  a  score  of  his  comrades 
signalized  their  arrival  aboard  a  few  days  before 


296          To  Kiel  in  the  "  Hercules " 

showed  very  clearly  how  a  French  prisoner  would 
greet  a  British  ship  if  he  knew  her  nationality. 

The  Hercules  went  into  her  lock  at  Brunsbiittel 
an  hour  before  midnight.  The  Regensburg,  which 
had  preceded  her  through  the  canal,  was  already 
in  the  adjoining  lock,  and  in  attempting  to  pass  on 
the  light  cruiser  Constance  and  three  British 
destroyers  at  the  same  operation  the  canal  people 
made  rather  a  mess  of  things.  There  was  a 
savage  crashing  and  tearing  of  metal  at  one  stage, 
followed  by  a  considerable  flow  of  profanity  in 
two  languages.  When,  the  next  morning  in  the 
Bight,  a  signal  of  condolence  was  made  by  the 
Hercules  to  one  of  the  destroyers  following  in  her 
wake  on  the  "messy"  state  of  its  nose,  the  reply 
came  back.  "Don't  worry  about  my  nose.  You 
ought  to  see  the  Regensburg.  I've  got  a  piece  of 
her  side-plating  on  my  forecastle !"  That  was 
the  second  time  the  unlucky  Regensburg  had  come 
to  grief  in  locking  through  at  Brunsbiittel  with  the 
ships  of  the  Allied  Naval  Commission. 

Owing  to  the  fog,  the  Germans  were  unable,  or 
unwilling,  to  send  a  ship  to  take  off  their  pilots 
from  the  Hercules  and  escorting  destroyers  after 
the  outer  limits  of  the  mine-fields  had  been  passed, 
and  it  became  necessary  as  a  consequence  to  carry 
them  on  to  Eosyth.  The  change  of  air  and  food 
incidental  to  their  personally  conducted  tour  to 


Back  to  Base 


297 


Scapa  (to  await  the  next  German  transport  home) 
was  evidently  a  by  no  means  disagreeable  prospect 
to  them,  judging  by  the  way  they  took  the  news. 
The  steward  who  reported  that  the  pilot  he  was 
looking  after  had  been  "stowing  away  grub  like 
he  expected  a  long  continuance  of  the  blockade, " 
may  have  stumbled  upon  the  reason  for  their 
philosophic  attitude. 

We  found  the  Firth  of  Forth  as  we  left  it- 
wrapped  in  fog.  There  was  just  enough  visibility 
to  make  it  possible  to  find  the  gates  in  the  booms 
and  the  main  channel  under  the  bridge.  The  his- 
toric voyage  came  to  an  end  when  the  Hercules, 
after  tying  up  to  the  Queen  Elizabeth's  buoy  for  a 
few  hours,  went  into  the  dry  dock  at  two-thirty  in 
the  afternoon  of  the  20th.  The  Commission  left 
for  London  the  same  evening  in  a  special  train 
provided  by  the  Admiralty. 


THE    END 


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